"Never in history has there been a black market tamed from the supply side. From Prohibition to prostitution, from gambling to recreational drugs, the story is the same. Supply-side controls act to encourage production and increase profits. At best a few intermediaries get knocked out of business. But as long as demand persists, the market is served more or less as before. In the meantime, failure to 'win the war' [against crime] becomes a pretext for increasing police budgets, expanding law enforcement powers, and pouring more money into the voracious maw of the prison-industrial complex."-from the Introduction

R. T. Naylor specializes in the study of smuggling, black markets, and international financial crime. Wages of Crime takes the reader into the shadowy underworld of modern criminal business-arms trafficking, gold smuggling, money laundering, and terrorist financing. Naylor dissects the schemes by which illegal entrepreneurs disguise their acts, manage their take, and eventually enjoy the loot. The author asserts that much of what police, press, politicians, and the public understand about international crime is based on myth and misrepresentation.

Wages of Crime also outlines Naylor's claim that some of the most popular modern law-enforcement fads are inefficient or useless and can do massive damage in eroding civil liberties. In the wake of recent tragedies, Naylor's criticisms of contemporary anticrime policies and the confounding of criminal and national security issues have a sharper resonance.

About the Author

R. T. Naylor is Professor of Economics at McGill University and a consultant to tax authorities, law enforcement bodies, and the United Nations. He is the author of many books, including Economic Warfare: Sanctions, Embargo Busting, and Their Human Cost; Hot Money and the Politics of Debt; and Bankers, Bagmen, and Bandits: Business and Politics in the Age of Greed.

Reviews

The success of the policy of controlling crime by pursuing its proceeds remains unproven, the author argues. Naylor also finds several social harms of the policy, including a distortion of law enforcement priorities, the reduction of an individual's defense against arbitrary official action when the government is allowed to pursue punitive measures while satisfying only a civil burden of proof, and the corruption engendered by the use of 'sting' operations.

-- Bard R. Ferrall * Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 93:2/3 *



Book Information
ISBN 9780801489600
Author R. T. Naylor
Format Paperback
Page Count 400
Imprint Cornell University Press
Publisher Cornell University Press
Weight(grams) 907g