In Counterfeit Crime, economist, historian, and criminologist R.T. Naylor dissects the costs - economic, social, and political - of the seemingly never-ending wars on the grossly exaggerated menaces of Crime and Terror and how most things politicians do to combat them make matters worse - for the public and the public good. He explains how the post-World War II welfare state, with its commitment to building public infrastructure, maintaining social security, and providing accessible education, gave way to the modern executive state, with its focus on guaranteeing corporate welfare, dropping bombs on countries too weak to fight back, and manipulating the thoughts and actions of populations kept in line by the carrot of glitzy toys and the stick of ever-heavier legal sanctions. He dissects how the canons of free-market fundamentalism, backed by the cannons of state power, paved the road toward a soft form of totalitarianism, which march hand in hand with millennial Christianity and a military-security-industrial complex in search for new - mostly imaginary - enemies.

Counterfeit Crime is savage in its critique of the political and judicial status quo and outraged at an economy rife with corruption.