The Ugly epoch —An Analysis of the 1960-90 Crime Wave
ABSTRACT
After summarising evidence of the surge in violent crime that afflicted the industrialised West from the 1960s to the 1990s, this essay reviews the principal explanations advanced by scholars and concludes the discussion with some new analytical elements. Essentially, the main theories of the West’s “crime wave” feature a combination of economic and cultural causes. While some assign greater if not exclusive weight to the former and others to the latter, a genuine effort has not been made to nest both approaches into a comprehensive explanation. This essay construes the crime wave of 1960–90 as a singular release of violent energy releted to an epochal/generational break. Within this framework, the intensity of such an energy release is viewed as dependent on the condition of a community’s economic and political bodies.