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

by Gregg Barak, Paul Leighton, Jeanne Flavin

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."

Genres: Crime, Nonfiction, Race

334 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.