ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the mismatch between crime prevention policies and structural opportunities for crime reduction. In this case, the ‘broken windows’ strategy was applied to nothing less than British industry and employment training. The high levels of unemployment set in train in the early 1980s became normalised, adverse social consequences denied or minimised, and character misrepresented as a necessary pre-condition for economic change. In the process, another ‘broken window of opportunity’ became part of the criminological landscape: the denial of any link between unemployment and crime, just at the point when resources came on tap on a scale which could have been used to mount a major programme of employment-related schemes for ex- offenders. The links between deprived and disadvantaged neighbourhoods and crime have been a staple subject for criminologists since the mid-19th century. So strong was the inequality of victimisation thus established that crime was confirmed as a species of regressive taxation of the poor.
