In memory of Nils Christie, 1928-2015

by Peter Wagner

I'm saddened to report that Nils Christie, the world-renowned criminologist, a member of the Prison Policy Initiative advisory board, and one of my personal inspirations, passed away on May 27 at the age of 87.

Christie came to my attention in 2001 when I tripped over a reference to his provocatively titled Crime Control as Industry: Towards Gulags, Western Style. The book reframed how I thought about both prisons and the movement to end them.

Even the title provided a completely new way to look at the problem. Rather than a "prison industrial complex", which evokes an Eisenhower-era critique but little in the way of an organizing strategy, the framework of an industry seemed spot on:

Only rarely will those working in or for any industry say that now, just now, the size is about right. Now we are big enough, we are well established, we do not want any further growth. An urge for expansion is built into industrial thinking, if for no other reason than to forestall being swallowed up by competitors. The crime control industry is no exception. But this is an industry with particular advantages, providing weapons for what is often seen as a permanent war against crime. The crime control industry is like rabbits in Australia or wild mink in Norway—there are so few natural enemies around.

Christie later told me that he considered the book "sad", and I tried to explain why, as someone living in the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world, the book was liberating: You simply can't change what you don't understand; and like the light at the end of the tunnel, Crime Control as Industry provided both hope and a path.