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

by Gregg Barak, Paul Leighton, Allison Cotton

Class, Race, Gender, and Crime is a popular, and provocative, introduction to crime and the criminal justice system through the lens of class, race, gender, and their intersections. The book systematically explores how the main sites of power and privilege in the United States consciously or unconsciously shape our understanding of crime and justice in society today.

The fifth edition maintains the overall structure of the fourth edition—including consistent headings in chapters for class, race, gender, and intersections—with updated examples, current data, and recent theoretical developments throughout. This new edition includes expanded discussions of police violence and the Black Lives Matter movement, immigration, and queer criminology.

This book is accompanied by instructor ancillaries. See the Resources tab for more information.

Instructor’s Manual. For each chapter in the text, this valuable resource provides a chapter outline, chapter summary, and suggestions for additional projects and activities related to the chapter.

Test Bank. The Test Bank includes multiple choice, true-false, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and essay questions for each chapter. The Test Bank is available as a Word document, PDF, or through the test management system Respondus.

Genres: Crime, Nonfiction, Race

344 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Gregg Barak is a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Eastern Michigan University. In 2003 Barak became the 27th Fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and in 2007 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Critical Division of the American Society of Criminology. Gregg Barak gained popularity as a commentator of the O.J. Simpsons trial on a radio talk show and is also a notable critic of the "crimes of the powerful".

Reviews

[Christa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of my favorite textbooks from my Engendering Prisons course. The authors explained intersectionality in interesting ways. The viewpoints were fairly radical, which I appreciated.

"Imagine standing in the middle of an intersection with a view down several streets that run in different directions. If a friend stands at the end of one of those streets, she can share some of the same view, but her perspective will also be different: the features that are closest will be different and she will have a view down different side streets. Now, think of those streets as being social dimensions such as class, race, ethnicity, gender, age, and sexual orientation.
The view of those streets represents a person's life experiences, worldview, and "social location." Describing a person's social location based solely on race would be like saying "Third Street" in a large diverse city without specifying a cross (intersecting) street." (81-82)

[Dylan Haman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a good supplement to criminal justice education in the United States. The book offers a good lens for viewing criminal justice, but is too heavy-handed on rhetorical flourishes that are not particularly valuable for understanding the true nature and theory of crime.

If we cannot understand the causes of social problems, then our pursuit to solve them will either do more harm than good or nothing at all.

[Morgan Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the layout of information, but felt like it was drawn out. Multiple times took about 3 pages to get to the point of what 1 page could’ve sufficiently said.