We have provided an overview of the notion of globalization and some of the controversies generated by this idea. It refers to a number of inter-related socioeconomic, political, cultural and technological changes that have opened up the world, but also made it a smaller place. Social relationships have been intensified. Globalization has created many opportunities but it has also created profound gender-based inequalities with a transnational business masculinity being dominant at the expense of women and marginalized men.
Globalization also has a complex relationship with criminal behaviour. There are opportunities that once did not exist due to criminals having greater mobility and a new modus operandi, such as information technology. Globalization has also opened up more markets for criminals to exploit and made committing crime easier. Also, some of the inequalities engendered by globalization are criminogenic and where the conventional means of making a living are no longer possible, for example, in deindustrialized areas, then crime is an alternative method of survival.
We demonstrated that globalization and its impact on offending and victimization is uneven, as well as being gendered. We used the examples of drug and human trafficking to delineate gender-based inequalities and exclusion, especially the ways in which the human rights of men and women might be differentially compromised.
We spent some time outlining the field of comparative criminology to show how our knowledge and understanding of crime issues can be enhanced by looking at what other countries do. We can also see that globalization has not resulted in uniformity across the globe, with the nature of crime, victimization and control still having unique characteristics in individual nation states.
Finally, we introduced six global drivers of crime, which are at work in many societies, and showed how they have influenced crime and public policy in England and Wales. The key point is that there are global and universal processes, but their effects vary from country to country. They also interact with human rights principles and values.
