Crime and Economic Downturn: The Complexity of Crime and Crime Politics in Greece since 2009

Description and explanation of the relationship between economic downturn and crime have to date been limited by the narrow scope of criminal activity characteristically selected as a focus by pertinent criminological scholarship. Efforts to examine the relationship have overwhelmingly approached it through the prism of common property and violent offences, or, and to a lesser degree, white-collar crime. As a consequence, appreciation has been impeded of the existence and heightened political significance of diverse and complex connections between a wider array of forms of criminality during times of economic downturn. To demonstrate the value of such connections to the study of the relationship between economic downturn and crime, we draw on the contemporary experience of crisis-hit Greece, where the political importance of associations between corruption, common property and violent offences, and illicit political violence, has made them indispensable components of any account of the linkages between economic downturn and crime in the Greek context.