The economic policies of the 1980s resulted in many unforeseen social trends. The most malignant of these has been the unprecedented rise, since 1987, in crimes of violence against the person, especially among juveniles. Using their own official statistics, author Oliver James demonstrates that Home Office claims that violence has not been growing are false.

Public debates about violence tend to centre on single-cause explanations, such as moral fecklessness, single parenting, depictions of violence in films and videos, and even genetics. If their is a single-cause, argues author Oliver James, it is to be found in the far more complex issue of inequality.

Since the 1980s, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened. There is less welfare and worse welfare for the disadvantaged. Furthermore, a winner-loser culture has emerged, with the disadvantaged deemed the 'losers'.

James proposes a 'lagged' theory of violence causation. He demonstrates that the rise in numbers of low income families in the early 1980s caused another rise from the late 1980s onwards: violence against the person. Separating the evidence concerning the causes of violence from that concerned with criminality in general, James links trends in social, familial and economic deprivation to show how inequality provides a breeding ground for violence, historically and cross-nationally.