Book Review: Unsafe in the Ivory Tower: The Sexual Victimization of College Women

• Author: Catherine D. Marcum
• Date: 01 September 2011
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016810392329
• Published date: 01 September 2011
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

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Criminal Justice Review 36(3)
considered a protective factor. Davidson also highlights that this domain often leads to overclassi-
fication of females since many of these women are also on social assistance while in drug treatment
because they are more likely to have to care for young children than male offenders. The results of
Davidson’s qualitative analysis guide her to the conclusion that these instruments should be modi-
fied to include gender-specific theoretical models to ensure that females and males are receiving the
appropriate levels of supervision and services while under criminal justice supervision.
Overall, Davidson’s study provides insight into the gendered nature of offending. Her book
presents a detailed account of the criminal justice system’s propensity to, as she puts it, hide female
offenders in plain sight through the application of an ‘‘insert gender and stir’’ approach to risk
assessment. This text would be suitable for graduate courses on gender and corrections. I would also
recommend this book to scholars interested in examining the gendered nature of offending and the
criminal justice response to female offenders.
B. Fisher, L. Daigle, and F. Cullen
Unsafe in the Ivory Tower: The Sexual Victimization of College Women
Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2010. pp. xiv, 230. $36.95. ISBN 978-1-4129-5477-8
Reviewed by: Catherine D. Marcum, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, USA
DOI: 10.1177/0734016810392329
In their book, Unsafe in the Ivory Tower: The Sexual Victimization of Women, Fisher, Daigle, and
Cullen make a valuable addition to the existing literature on victimization of college-aged females.
According to the authors, the main purpose of the text was to not just present statistics and informa-
tion on the rate of sexual victimization of college women but more so to give an accurate portrayal of
the risks that female students encounter and how they choose to respond if they are sexually victi-
mized. Utilizing findings from previous studies on...