Punishment as part of a class-based process of economic and social control: the Marxist approach

The practices and institutions for the punishment of offenders were not analysed or written about in any detail by Karl Marx, or his collaborator Friedrich Engels. Neither did they write much on crime or criminals, and they did not develop a theory of crime and punishment in the same manner as Durkheim. So, we have to look at the writing of later Marxist-influenced writers to provide us with a Marxist analysis and theory of punishment.