Crime has been a silent partner in modernisation. Within a contracting world, crime and its traditional boundaries are transforming into predictable and active features of globalisation. The analysis which follows charts this evolution.

Globalisation creates new and favourable contexts for crime. This is the consequence of what Harvey refers to as the ‘compression of time and the annihilation of space’ (1989: 293–5). Commercial crime relationships in particular are set free to benefit from opportunities not dissimilar to those enjoyed by multinational enterprise beyond the jurisdiction of the individual state and the limitations of single markets. The globalisation of crime represents the potential to view many crime relationships unburdened of conventional legal and moral determination. Crime operates amongst the other market solvents in globalisation, and as such may now be analysed against general features of ‘commodification’ which are presently expanding and penetrating every corner of the planet.

Were this book to advance a predominant thesis it would be that the process of time-space compression, which is globalisation, has enhanced material crime relationships to an extent where they require analysis in a similar fashion to any other crucial market force. The claim of globalisation is that: ‘Spatial barriers have collapsed so that the world is now a single field within which capitalism can operate, and capital flows become more and more sensitive to the relative advantages of particular spatial locations’ (Waters, 1995: 57–8). The context of crime is such a location.