Inequality, Crime and Public Policy (Routledge Revivals)

First published in 1979, Inequality, Crime, and Public Policy integrates and interprets the vast corpus of existing research on social class, slums, and crime, and presents its own findings on these matters. It explores two major questions. First, do policies designed to redistribute wealth and power within capitalist societies have effects upon crime? Second, do policies created to overcome the residential segregation of social classes have effects on crime? The book provides a brilliantly comprehensive and systematic review of the empirical evidence to support or refute the classic theories of Engles, Bonger, Merton, Cloward and Ohlin, Cohen, Miller, Shaw and McKay, amongst many others. Braithwaite confronts these theories with evidence of the extent and nature of white collar crime, and a consideration of the way law enhancement and law enforcement might serve class interest.

Preface; Acknowledgements; Part I 1. Defining the problem 2. The class-crime relationship 3. Theories of lower-class criminality Part II 4. The class-mix hypothesis 5. Testing the class-mix hypothesis on data in the literature 6. Testing the class-mix hypothesis on self-report data 7. Testing the class-mix hypothesis on official delinquency data 8. Testing the class-mix hypothesis on inter-city comparisons 9. Class-mix: conclusions and policies Part III 10. Rethinking the distribution of crime among classes 11. Alternative levels of analysis for determining whether inequality contributes to crime 12. Inequality: conclusions and policies; Postscript: The socialist critique of the reformist criminology in the book; Appendix: Class-mix policies; Notes; Select bibliography; Name Index; Subject Index

John Braithwaite