![handle is hein.journals/crmlsc8 and id is 1 raw text is: Contemporary Crises, 8 (1984) 1-18 1
Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam - Printed in The Netherlands
THE IDEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE HIDDEN ECONOMY:
PRIVATE JUSTICE AND WORK-RELATED CRIME*
PHIL SCRATON and NIGEL SOUTH**
Rarely does criminological research stumble on a subject area which
comes to take on such extensive significance as has occurred in the case of
the so-called Hidden Economy. The debate over the progressive or ex-
ploitative character of a hidden, informal, black or unofficial economy has
now carried over into wider social and economic research programmes in
both the academic and policymaking spheres [1]. Our concern in this ar-
ticle, however, is to critically consider the ways in which the recent devel-
opment of academic research interest in the hidden economy reflects a wider
concern generated by disclosures, investigation and policing of work-related
crime.
It was to be hoped, if not assumed, that the development of this body of
research would provide a significant response to the popular images, moral
indignation and lack of differentiation between categories which had be-
come so apparent in the handling of the issue within political and media
analyses. The hidden economy research, however, has compounded the
problem of analysis. Rather than providing an analysis which situates work-
related crime in its political, historical and economic contexts, the work of
many writers on the subject appears satisfied to reject any serious considera-
tion of property relations, class antagonism, opportunity structure or in-
dustrial conflict. What work-related crime represents is a part-time trading
network [21. It is a hidden economy which represents:
...the sub-commercial movement of materials and finance, together with the systematic conceal-
ment of that process, for illegal gain ... a microcosmic, wry reflection of the visible economic struc-
ture, upon which it parasitically feeds . . . the hidden economy runs to the side of the legitimate
[3].
The Open University, Milton Keynes, U.K.
Middlesex Polytechnic, Enfield, London, U.K.
*A version of this paper was first prepared for the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association,
17th Annual Meeting, at the University of Ottawa, Ontario, June 1982.
**To whom correspondence should be addressed: Nigel South, Research Associate, Centre for Occu-
pational and Community Research, Middlesex Polytechnic, Queensway, Enfield, London, U.K.
0378-1100/84/$03.00 © 1984 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/crmlsc8&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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