Crime, Inequality and Power [Hardcover]

Introduction  1. The Social Construction of Crime  2.Murder and Assault: Comparing Street crime and Elite Crime  3. The Case of Rape: Perpetrators as Strangers or Significant Others  4. Theft by the Rich and Poor  5. Drug Violations: From Street Corners to Pharmaceutical Headquarters  6. Crimes Against the State and Crimes By the State  7. Punishing Crime  8. Public Policies for a Safer Society.

Eileen B. Leonard is Professor of Sociology at Vassar College, and she teaches a yearly course at Taconic Correctional Facility for Women. Her teaching and research focus on crime, gender, inequality, and social theory. Eileen has chaired the Sociology Department at Vassar College, and been Director of the Womens Studies Program and the American Studies Program. She is currently Director of Faculty Teaching Development at Vassar.

Eileen B. Leonard succeeds wonderfully well in imposing a highly effective framework on how we should understand the concept of crime, and how we can best respond to the problem of crime. She documents persuasively the societal overreaction to crimes of the powerless and the societal under-reaction to crimes of the powerful. Students and their professors alike have much to learn from this book. - David O. Friedrichs, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of Scranton, USA

Crime, Inequality, and Power offers a timely, thoughtful, and much-needed comparative perspective on the problem of crime and the construction of the offender. As Leonard systematically demonstrates, based on a wide range of clearly presented examples, crime in the streets AND crime in the suites make and manufacture definitions about the criminlC4