Class, Race, Gender, and Crime: The Social Realities of Justice in America

Class, Race, Gender, and Crime: The Social Realities of Justice in America is a systematic examination of the impact of class, race and gender on criminological theory and the administration of criminal justice. These topics represent the main sites of inequality, power, and privilege in the U.S., which define society’s understanding, consciously or unconsciously, of who is a criminal and how society should deal with them.

The text is ordered around short, lucid introductions to the key concepts of class, race/ethnicity, gender and their intersections. Subsequent chapters use these concepts as subheadings to structure topics related to criminology, victimization and each phase of the administration of criminal justice: practices of law making, law enforcement, adjudication, sentencing, and punishment. Significantly, the authors provide a history to contextualize contemporary data and policy debates, which they observe through the lens of social justice. The book concludes with a review of the evolution of justice in America, along with an evaluation of alternative crime reduction policies, intended to further realize the goals and aspirations of "liberty, justice, and equality for all."