During the 1980s many countries – including Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zealand – experienced a significant growth in income inequality (Saunders, Stott and Hobbes 1991; Levy and Murnane 1992; Saunders 1993; Cowell, Jenkins and Litchfield 1996). In Britain, the United States and Australia this increase was accompanied by a progressive spatial concentration of the poor. Green (1994), for example, found large increases in the spatial concentration of unemployment in large metropolitan areas and traditional mining/manufacturing areas of Wales and in the north of England. In Australia a similar progressive spatial concentration of the unemployed in urban areas of low socioeconomic status has been documented by Gregory and Hunter (1995). In the United States it has been documented by Wilson (1987) and by Massey and Denton (1993). This growth in inequality might be regarded as of little account were it generally matched by a growth in real income but it has not been. The economic position of unskilled men in the United States fell markedly during the 1980s and early 1990s as did the ratio of employment to the population of working age and hours worked per employee across Europe (Freeman 1995). In Australia and New Zealand the growth in inequality occurred largely because of a decline in real household disposable income at the bottom end of the income distribution (Saunders, Stott and Hobbes 1991).

Criminologists have traditionally viewed these sorts of changes with concern.