Theories of crime and development: An historical perspective

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Abstract
Theories of crime have long assumed that increased criminality is an inevitable consequence of economic and social progress. In the 1960s, when criminologists turned their attention to the Third World, this view was accepted by scholars who built on modernisation theory, and it was left unchallenged by the dependency theorists who began studying crime a decade later. But historical studies of crime have now undermined this assumption; in many nations industrialisation, urbanisation and rapid social change have been accompanied by declines in crime. More studies of long‐term trends of crime and criminal law are needed before a necessarily complex theory of crime can be advanced that will replace the discredited theories now prevalent.