May 15, 2009

Crime Migrates From Street to Spreadsheet

By DALTON CONLEY

If criminologists in the 1960s had been told that inequality was going to rise sharply over the next four decades while inflation-adjusted wages for the bottom third of earners would stagnate, 99 out of 100 would have predicted a steep rise in crime. And when they learned that communications technologies — and, by extension, consumer marketing — would spread so that we'd all know how the "other half" lives, and that we'd believe that we could have it all, too, those