ABSTRACT
If people know anything about Lord Acton, it is likely to be that he believed that ‘all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. The previous substantive chapters attempted to put ugly pockmarked flesh around these solid bones of democratic common sense. In them it was shown that: (i) the growing concentration of economic power in national and transnational corporations is sometimes utilized to victimize large numbers of employers, consumers, and the general public; (ii) the enhanced legal powers of apprehension and investigation coupled with improved technological capacity of the police is sometimes used by officers to victimize criminally citizens and business, and; (iii) men who are powerful economically, politically, and physically occasionally impose themselves sexually on relatively powerless and vulnerable women. As opposed to all this unpleasantness, it was argued that women, a relatively powerless group, commit hardly any serious crimes in comparison with the endless spread-eagled trail of lifeless, injured, and robbed victims left in the path of predatory powerful men.
