[Pearls Before Swine]

I don't think its a matter of leninecy, rather, its a matter of convenience. The criminals become de facto allies of the government, irregular enforcers, as it were. The middle class becomes squeezed between the government criminals and the free-lancers.

Follow the money and follow the power. The leaders want to be at the top, sucking the wealth out of the docile and productive population. Command of the army, police, and government do a good deal of the work. Lenient treatment of criminals also helps.

I think you can see an interesting aspect of this in some of the soft-on-crime but hard-on-guns attitudes common here and in the UK. Suppressing the ability of the law-abiding populace to defend itself while "understanding" criminals and doing little about their access to weapons does the same thing, at a lower level, as easy treatment of criminals in overtly totalitarian regimes.