A Suitable Amount of Crime

by Nils Christie

Crime and punishment are social and cultural manifestations; they are closely bound up with people's perceptions of morality, norms and values. In this book, Nils Christie argues that crime is a fluid and shallow concept - acts that could be construed as criminal are unlimited and crime is therefore in endless supply. It should not be forgotten that there are alternatives, both in the definition of crime, and in responses to it.

A Suitable Amount of Crime looks at the great variations between countries over what are considered 'unwanted acts', how many are constructed as criminal and how many are punished. It explains the differences between eastern and western Europe, between the USA and the rest of the world. The author laments the size of prison populations in countries with large penal sectors, and asks whether the international community has a moral obligation to 'shame' states that are punitive in the extreme.

The book is written in an engaging and easily accessible style that will appeal to anyone interested in understanding contemporary problems of crime and punishment.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology

148 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Nils Christie was a Norwegian criminologist known for his criticism of penal incarceration and drug prohibition. Christie was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. He was also the president of the Scandinavian Council for Criminology and the director of the Institute for Criminology and Penal Law in Norway. Christie wrote about the massacre of prisoners from Yugoslavia in Norwegian concentration camps during WWII.

Reviews

[Jim v H · Rating 4 out of 5]

De wereld is een Nils Christie fan rijker

[Griffin R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Painfully ignorant regarding abolition on a practical and theoretical level, very possibly willfully so, but the rest is pretty good.

[Sarah Jane Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to do a critical analysis of this work from my Criminology course this quarter. I was not particularly excited about reading this book, but I ended up getting a lot out of it. Christie is not a native English speaker, so his writing is a little awkward at times. I ended up adjusting to his word choice and sentence structure after a couple of chapters though.

Christie approaches the concept of "crime" from an interesting point of view: crime doesn't really exist. He claims, instead, that only acts exist. Crime has no true or constant definition. Thus, it cannot be accurately measured, nor can different measurements of crime be meaningfully compared.

In the end, Christie insists that peacemaking must be given at least as much emphasis as the control of acts through punishment. As a global community, we must all work toward this end. He explains how the failure to do so will impact us all negatively.

I didn't expect to be interested in this piece of work, but I was ultimately very impressed. It's a short read, certainly worth picking up.

[Nadia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crime is a fluid concept, a social construct. The acts that could be construed as criminal are unlimited and crime is therefore in ‘endless supply’ (Christie, 2004).

[Aleksandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Christie sets out to illustrate the fluidity of crime and inefficacy of the modern penal system. Unfortunately, the book mostly consists of poorly written ramblings.