Understanding the Second Great Confinement: ... to be "Tough on Crime" is a Very Easy Sell These Days, And Few Seem to Care That We are Equally Tough on Civilization‪.‬

LAUREEN SNIDER teaches sociology at Queen's University, where she specializes in issues of criminal justice and corporate crime. She is the author of Bad Business: Corporate Crime in Canada. UNDER the guise of protecting the public from crime and disorder, Western societies in recent years have embarked on a criminalization crusade. While rates of violent crime fall, incarceration rates continue to soar. It is bizarre indeed that in an era of massive state downsizing, with public expenditures in free fall, state machinery to stigmatize and punish, and budgets for policing and criminal justice, have gone up. Controlling risks generated by the cupidity of corporate capital has led to deregulation, dismantling governmental machinery to detect and monitor illegal acts (from dumping unsafe substances to falsifying the results of experiments on the safety of new chemicals and drugs to manufacturing faulty medical devices); controlling risks generated by the cupidity of individuals - thieves and muggers - has led to increased state intervention, more and tougher laws, preventive detention, and boot camps. No lack of faith in government remedies here, no campaigns against government interference!