Q. Why has the analysis of crimes of the powerful been such a growth area in criminology over the past century?

It is tempting to give a simple or even simplistic answer to the above question: it is tempting to say that analysis and theory of crimes of the powerful have grown so quickly in the last century because the quantity and diversity of such crimes have themselves exploded outwards. As the number of crimes committed by the powerful have risen exponentially across the years and continents, so the police forces, crime-prevention agencies and legislators of the governments charged with halting these crimes have had to evolve into larger and more complex organizations also. For instance, amongst myriad forms of organized crime that developed in the twentieth century, one pertinent recent example is the efflorescence of high-tech and internet crime, where professional and international gangs manipulate technology to extort or steal large sums of money from the public. High-tech crime is of course a recent phenomenon; it did not exist at the turn of the last century. Therefore analysis of such activities by law agencies has grown to respond to this new threat; moreover, the analysis and prevention of such crimes has had to grow in sophistication and size just as the crimes themselves have done. Organized crime - be it narcotic trafficking, prostitution rings, corporate crimes and so on - has become a massive international business, and it has required larger agencies equipped with better criminal theory and technology and international cooperation between agencies to deal with it. Moreover, the clear lapse between the professionalism and techniques of many criminal organizations and the law agencies that pursue them will require these agencies to catch-up to the advances of these criminals in the next decades. And, of course, this catch-up will depend heavily