Capitalism, Class, and Crime in America

Conventional public analyses of crime, both conservative and liberal, begin with the assumption that crimes are committed by irrational individuals who constitute a threat to a rational social order. Sharing that initial assumption, conservatives and liberals diverge in their policy approaches to deterring criminality. Some recent orthodox economic analyses of crime, having begun to re lax the assumption, view crime as a process of rational choice by criminals; they offer the possibility of "optimal" crime preven tion policies through the application of conventional economic models.