Book Review: Pogrebin, M. (Ed.). (2004). About Criminals: A View of the Offender's World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. pp. 367
DOI | 10.1177/0734016807310639 |
Date | 01 December 2007 |
Published date | 01 December 2007 |
Subject Matter | Articles |
Using two in-depth case studies, Kathleen Daly and Sarah Curtis-Fawley explore the
benefits of restorative justice conferences for victims of sexual assault. They carefully
assess the benefits and costs of this alternative for the victims, finding that victims may not
understand the trade-off between certainty of conviction in a restorative justice conference
and severity of punishment in a traditional trial.
The final section of the book deals with the “intersectionalities” between gender, race,
poverty, and crime. Sally S. Simpson and Carole Gibbs use self-report data from the National
Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine how indicators associated with social learning the-
ory, social control theory, self-control theory, and strain theory serve to predict delinquency
for different gender, race, and class groups. The result is an intriguing demonstration that a
purely quantitative approach to these issues can lead to more confusion than clarity.
Janet L. Lauritsen and Callie Marie Rennison explore the role of race and ethnicity in
violence against women with National Crime Victimization Survey data. They find that
predictors of victimization and trends in victimization are similar for White, Black, and
Latina women.
The overall quality of this collection is excellent. The diversity of methods, points of
view, and subjects addressed under the umbrella of gender and crime reflect the growing
sophistication of the experts in this area. As a 30-year veteran of the field, it is important for
me to say that the chapters in this collection are very good criminology. They effectively moot
debate about feminist versus mainstream criminology by making the need to understand the
gendered nature of criminal behavior and criminal victimization inescapable.
Jerome McKean
Ball State University
Pogrebin, M. (Ed.). (2004). About Criminals: A View of the
Offender’s World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. pp. 367
DOI: 10.1177/0734016807310639
In this edited volume, Mark Pogrebin highlights, as both editor and contributor, the value
of qualitative research in understanding the everyday nature of crime and deviance.
Drawing on the naturalistic approach, the book represents a collection of 31 readings, all
of which attempt to give the reader an in-depth look into how offenders think about their
offenses and, in some cases, their victims. All of the articles have been previously published
and 28 of them are from academic journals. Although one study draws on content analysis
and a few others on ethnography, the primary data source in the majority of the readings is
based on interviews. However, several of the studies use a combination of surveys and inter-
views, whereas others use a combination of field data collection and interviews. Interestingly,
several of the articles draw on both field and interview data with active offenders.
The volume begins with a short introduction that briefly mentions the value of the natu-
ralistic use of field research. Considering that this is the overarching theme of the book, a
deeper discussion of the naturalistic methodology in the introduction section may have
446 Criminal Justice Review
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