Criminology at the Crossroads

Criminology at the Crossroads: Feminist Readings in Crime and Justice is an edited collection of accessible articles on gender, crime, and justice. It contains key works in criminology and law by well-known feminist scholars including Carol Smart, Kristin Bumiller, Hilary Allen, Meda Chesney-Lind, Kathleen Ferraro, Laureen Snider, and Regina Austin. The 14 selections, chosen for their empirical focus and sophisticated modes of interpretation, raise difficult, unresolved problems for feminist work in criminology. Themes include the construction of women in feminist, legal, and criminological discourses; the blurred boundaries of victimization and criminalization; masculinities and violence; and the crossroads and intersections of class-race-gender, politics, and justice.
Daly and Mahers introductory essay offers a brief overview of the field, past and present, and analyzes the shifts that occurred in feminist thinking between the 1970s and the 1990s. The editors suggest that feminists need to move beyond the familiar critiques of androcentrism in the field. They propose that instead of asking Where are the women? or Where is sex/gender in criminology?, feminists should say Here are the women (and men) and Here is sex/gender in criminal law, lawbreaking, and state responses to harm. While acknowledging the current vitality and energy of feminist scholarship, Daly and Maher also suggest that feminists in criminology stand at the crossroads of discourse and realism and of academic and activist knowledge. Criminology at the Crossroads: Feminist Readings in Crime and Justice will challenge and provoke students, making it an essential text not only for graduates and advanced undergraduates in criminology, law, and the social sciences, but also for scholars interested in becoming more familiar with feminist work.