Book Review: Heimer, K., & Kruttschnitt, C. (Eds.). (2006). Gender and Crime: Patterns in Victimization and Offending. New York: New York University Press, pp. 342

• Author: Jerome McKean
• Published date: 01 December 2007
• Date: 01 December 2007
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734016807310659
• Subject Matter: Articles

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Criminal Justice Review
their reputations if they fought a woman. Some of these interviewees, however, believed it
was acceptable to encourage other females to fight on their behalf. Also, a few participants
stated that it was perfectly appropriate to engage in promiscuous behaviors to enact revenge
on their female partners. One of these respondents even claimed to have had an affair with
the mother of his girlfriend.
Although this book makes an important contribution to the criminological and sociological
literature, Mullins acknowledges that his study does have important limitations. First, all of
the participants were compensated for participating in the study. Mullins admits that this
may have affected the study’s validity. He even describes a few instances where it seemed
obvious that a few of the participants were being deceptive. In addition, Mullins suggests
that some of the interviewees may have felt the need to embellish their tales of violence and
illegal behavior in an attempt to impress the White, middle-class college professors who
interviewed them. Also, the author contends that there may be a problem with the study’s
generalizability. It should be noted that the sample is nonrandom and relatively small when
one considers the population of Saint Louis. Given this, the participants who participated
may not reflect the majority of individuals who live and work in impoverished, urban areas.
Some scholars may also have problems with the fact that the author was not personally
involved in collecting the data. Nevertheless, in spite of these limitations, this book is an
important work and provides an enormous amount of information about a subject that most
scholars know very little about. I highly recommend this book and believe that it would
make excellent supplemental reading material for a graduate or undergraduate course
related to race and gender issues.
Robert M. Worley
University of Texas of the Permian Basin, Odessa
Heimer, K., & Kruttschnitt, C....