Inequality of crime

[Extract] the relationship between crime and inequality is central to criminology. each chapter in this text acknowledges that power and powerlessness, advantage and disadvantage, social structures and hierarchies play significant roles in shaping criminal law, society and individual behaviour. This chapter explores these themes by canvassing seven major propositions on relationship between crime and inequality, moving from the societal level to the individual criminal act. We then turn to the image that criminologists have of inequality and the ways they explain the disproportionate presence of disadvantaged people in the criminal justice system. This image, which we term the familiar analysis of inequality, focuses on class, and to the lesser extent, on race/ethnicity and age.