Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Crime

Book excerpt: The book argues that capitalism, as an economic system, and patriarchy, as a form of gender organization, must be treated as interacting structures in any attempt to explain crime. It begins with a socialist feminist critique of the failure of Marxist criminology to analyze gender relations and the origin of female oppression accurately and, therefore, how these factors contribute to the development of crime in society. It then explores such topics as the limitations of both liberal and radical feminist viewpoints concerning crime, the causative factors for a variety of crimes, ranging from street crime to corporate crime, and the inadequacies of government's present conservative approach to crime.