NCJ Number
87768
Editor(s)
C Sumner
Date Published
1982
Length
356 pages
Annotation
Nine essays consider crime and criminal justice in the Third World from a Marxist perspective, focusing on how the processes of imperialism and underdevelopment affected the whole range of law violations and legal institutions current in postcolonial societies.
Abstract
The book is critical of the dominant criminological analysis of crime in developing countries and of its modernization perspective, and it blames the underdevelopment problem on the imperialists' appropriation and exploitation of other people's land and labor. For instance, essays explain how penal labor law and tax legislation obtained labor coercively in Tanganyika and illustrate the effects of colonial land policy on the Luguru of Tanganyika in particular. Another example of imperialism's deleterious effects centers on Senegal, where colonialists produced a body of customary law which was not based on custom and only served colonial interests. Prostitution among the urban poor of old Nairobi in east Africa and robbery by the urban poor in modern Cali, Colombia, are other examples mentioned of how colonial capitalism produces new crime categories and new crimes in developing countries. A discussion of the origins and effects of Papua New Guinea's new village court system shows how communal-capitalist modes of production conflict at the court level. Cuba's success at reducing crime rates and improving its legal system is seen as the outgrowth of a wider revolution in the political economy, social organization, class structure, and social values. Chapter notes, an index, and 470 references are provided.