ABSTRACT
It is a commonplace that ‘the crime problem’ and Tear of crime’ have become issues of major concern in almost every sphere and discourse of modern societies: ‘Scarcely a day passes that we are not hit anew with penetrating stories of criminal victimisation’ (Ferraro 1995: 1). This holds true particularly for Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the eastern bloc. For Germany, the transformations of late modernity are characterised by a unique conjunction; namely, an overlapping of the general process of transition in late (western) modernity with the upheaval of state socialism in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), and its ramifications for a new unified Germany Naturally there are different views about the development of crime in Germany but it is only a little simplification to describe the mainstream discourse in criminology and victimology as an echo of the sensationalist public presentation in politics and mass media.
