Demystifying Power, Crime and Social Harm

This edited collection revisits Steven Box’s book, Power, Crime and Mystification, published in 1983, and considers its relevance thirty years on. It introduces the critical analysis developed by Box which examined corporate crime, police crime, rape, and female crime and analyses the continuities and discontinuities since that time in relation to crime, the state and the exercise/mystification of power. It explores the ways in which we can see his influence nationally and internationally on critical criminological, zemiological and abolitionist writings today and how these can be applied to the present moment to understand criminal justice and criminal injustice. It asks: how can some of the neglected aspects of his work be revived in the contemporary literature? And how can his ideas and concepts help shine light upon issues, controversies and harms that were not covered in the original book? It provides a toolkit for students and academics to critically analyse the issues around crime/harm, power/powerlessness, justice/injustice, and truth/mystifications. This book brings together leading critical scholars to engage with a classic text in critical criminology.