James W. Messerschmidt’s groundbreaking book Crime as Structured Action demonstrates that to understand crime, we must understand how crime operates through a complex series of gender, race, sexual, and class practices. In the second edition of this powerful book, Messerschmidt updates both structured action theory as well as several of the original case studies, and he includes a new case study that further brings structured action theory to life. The book also features expanded discussions of whiteness and sexuality, and their relationships to crime.

The author of this volume skillfully demonstrates that a vital component to understanding crime is to be able to view it as more than a single activity. James W. Messerschmidt argues that crime operates subtly through a complex series of gender, race and class practices and these interwoven elements must be seen as part of all social existence, not viewed independently.

Challenging the common masculinist character of criminological research, James W. Messerschmidt develops an elaborate scrutiny of the gender roles that, along with class and race, influence the occurrence and types of crimes in our society.

This book provides a unique conceptualization of: 1) embodiment as a lived aspect of gender, 2) how masculine practices may be constructed by both boys and girls, 3) how such embodied social actions are related to violence and nonviolence, and 4) the fallacy of the mind-body, sex-gender, and gender difference binaries.

Sociologists and criminologists have long known that there is a relationship between masculinity and crime, for gender has been advanced consistently as the strongest predictor of criminal involvement. Nine Lives, written by one of the most respected authorities on the subject of gender and crime, provides a fascinating account of the connection am

The editors, Rosemary Gartner and Bill McCarthy, have assembled a diverse cast of criminologists, historians, legal scholars, psychologists, and sociologists from a number of countries to discuss key concepts and debates central to the field. The Handbook includes examinations of the historical and contemporary patterns of women's and men's involvement in crime; as well as biological, psychological, and social science perspectives on gender, sex, and criminal activity. Several essays discuss the ways in which sex and gender influence legal and popular reactions to crime. An important theme throughout The Handbook is the intersection of sex and gender with ethnicity, class, age, peer groups, and community as influences on crime and justice. Individual chapters investigate both conventional topics - such as domestic abuse and sexual violence - and topics that have only recently drawn the attention of scholars - such as human trafficking, honor killing, gender violence during war, state rape, and genocide.

Feminist criminology grew out of the Women’s Movement of the 1970s in response to the neglect of women by, and the male dominance of, mainstream criminology. Examining feminist theoretical perspectives and empirical research in criminology, this key book investigates their impact on the discipline, the academy, and the criminal justice system.