Social class and crime in Malta

Abstract

Croall (2011) sustains that crime and victimization are often associated with lower class people in certain branches of criminology and popular discourse. This behaviour is often blamed on individual pathologies and deviant subcultures. Criminological studies and the media sometimes tend to forget that different social classes have the opportunity to commit different types of crime. At the same time, not all social groups are made to answer for their actions, as will be argued in this paper. Scientific and media discourses tend to associate crime with one class, neglecting the crime of the middle classes, the wealthy and the powerful. This chapter will set out to debunk the myth that there is a criminal lower class preying on the rest of society. We will start by taking a cursory look at some of the theories which drew a connection between crime and the lower social classes. In the second section of this chapter we will then move on to analyse different forms of white collar and corporate crime. The third section will focus on delineating which social groups end up in prison, and for which type of crime. This is followed by a section which will look at what type of crime is reported to have been committed in different parts of the Maltese Islands, with a short analysis as to why different types of crime take place in different social milieus. Another section will take a look at the role the media plays in generating, sustaining, shaping or changing the relationship between social divisions, inequality, crime and victim status.