ABSTRACT
The central thesis of criminological theories of market society is that societies that emphasize the pursuit of private gain over all other social ends are inherently prone to higher levels of crime. Market theories distinguish between that core concept of the 'market society' and the conventional idea of a 'free market economy'. The idea that the growth of market values and institutions breeds predatory and violent behaviour has a long history, beginning with early critics of a newly emerging market capitalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nineteenth-century capitalism, in Engels' view, bred crime – as well as alcoholism and other related social ills – in several mutually reinforcing ways. In England, similarly, John Lea and Jock Young's What Is to Be Done About Law and Order argued in the 1980s that, despite enormous changes since the nineteenth century, crime remained deeply linked to the 'core dynamics of capitalism'.
