ABSTRACT
Such changed socio-economic circumstances should provide fruitful conditions for critical criminological research and analysis and indeed provides support for recent arguments for a return to traditional Marxist analysis. Russell (2006) observes that since the early 1990s, the ‘new directions’ in critical criminology that we encountered above have simply excluded Marxism on the grounds that it is an outdated mode of analysis. He argues that Marxism remains as relevant as ever for analysing crime, criminal justice, and the role of the state and we might observe that the forthcoming economic crisis where whole groups of ‘white collared’ professionals, among many others, previously not considered to be members of the working class, not least by themselves, and thus immune to the negative extremes of the trade cycle will in fact become increasingly proletarianised victims of the downturn with both their homes and jobs at risk. The affect on the psyche of those with strong bonds to the conventional social order and socio-economic status world suddenly cast adrift in unfamiliar and significantly impoverished changed circumstances could have major implications for crime and criminality.
