The Civilization of Crime

Along with most of the rest

        of Western culture, has crime itself become more "civilized"?

        This book exposes as myths the beliefs that society has become more violent

        than it has been in the past and that violence is more likely to occur

        in cities than in rural areas.

      The product of years of study

        by scholars from North America and Europe, The Civilization of Crime

        shows that, however violent some large cities may be now, both rural and

        urban communities in Sweden, Holland, England, and other countries were

        far more violent during the late Middle Ages than any cities are today.

      Contributors show that the

        dramatic change is due, in part, to the fact that violence was often tolerated

        or even accepted as a form of dispute settlement in village-dominated

        premodern society. Interpersonal violence declined in the seventeenth

        and eighteenth centuries, as dispute resolution was taken over by courts

        and other state institutions and the church became increasingly intolerant

        of it.

      The book also challenges a

        number of other historical-sociological theories, among them that contemporary

        organized crime is new, and addresses continuing debate about the meaning

        and usefulness of crime statistics.

      CONTRIBUTORS: Esther Cohen,

        Herman Diederiks, Florike Egmond, Eric A. Johnson, Michele Mancino, Eric

        H. Monkkonen, Eva Österberg, James A. Sharpe, Pieter Spierenburg,

        Jan Sundin, Barbara Weinberger