Special Mention for Unravelling the Crime-Development Nexus

Associate Professor Jarrett Blaustein’s book, Unravelling the Crime-Development Nexus (Bloomsbury Publishing), has received a Special Mention in the 2024 Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) Book Award, co-authored with Tom Chodor and Nathan W Pino.

Unraveling the Crime-Development Nexus interrogates the claim that crime represents a significant threat to economic development. Combining historical analysis with a unique empirical perspective based on interviews with high-level international crime policy insiders, it accounts for how and why the ‘crime-development nexus’ has been invoked by international actors, including the United Nations, to advance and secure variations of a global capitalist development agenda since the 19th Century.

Drawing on perspectives anchored in critical criminology, International Relations, and development studies, Unraveling the Crime Development Nexus reveals that the international crime policy agenda today remains overwhelmingly responsive to those who benefit from the further expansion of neoliberal globalisation, while simultaneously marginalising subordinate actors throughout the ‘developing’ world.

The book concludes by considering how international organisations, civil society actors, and major donors might support a more equitable and sustainable model of global crime governance that addresses the structural causes of crime and uneven development at a global level.

Congratulations to Associate Professor Blaustein and his co-authors on this recognition!