Radical criminology is a perspective that sees crime not just as individual wrongdoing but as a symptom of deeper social inequality and power imbalance. It argues that laws and punishments often protect the interests of the wealthy and powerful, while labeling the poor and marginalized as “criminal.” Emerging in the 1960s and inspired by Marxist thought, it challenges us to look at crime through the lens of class, capitalism, and social justice.

Marxist Foundations of Radical Criminology

Radical criminology is based on Marxist ideas about power, inequality, and capitalism.

It argues that crime cannot be understood separately from the economic structure of society.

In capitalist systems, laws and the justice system often serve the interests of the wealthy ruling class rather than everyone equally.

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How Marxism Views Society

1. Class and Exploitation

Marx saw society as divided into two main groups:

• The Bourgeoisie (ruling class): These are the people who own and control the means of production, factories, land, and businesses.

• The Proletariat (working class): These are the people who don’t own property or businesses. They have to sell their labour to survive.

This relationship is exploitative because workers are paid less than the value they create.

The extra value (or profit) goes to the capitalist. In other words, the wealth of the ruling class depends on other people’s unpaid labour.

This idea – class as exploitation- is central to Marxist sociology.

2. Base and Superstructure

Marx explained society using the idea of the base and superstructure:

• The economic base is the foundation of society—how things are produced and who controls production.

• The superstructure includes institutions like the government, education, law, and the media.

According to Marx, these institutions exist mainly to protect the interests of the ruling class and keep the capitalist system running.

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Capitalism as the Cause of Crime

Traditional Marxists argue that capitalism itself creates crime because of the inequality, pressure, and greed it produces.

In capitalism, a small ruling group – the bourgeoisie – owns most of the wealth and the means of production (factories, businesses, land).

The working class (proletariat) majority owns little and must sell their labour to survive.

This unequal relationship is exploitative, because workers produce more value than they are paid for, while capitalists profit from their labour.

Marxists argue that this economic system shapes everything else in society: government, education, law, and even the justice system.

These institutions exist mainly to protect the interests of the rich and keep the class system in place.

1. Crime as a Response to Inequality: Sociologist David Gordon said that poverty, unemployment, and homelessness push some working-class people to commit crimes like theft or fraud – often out of necessity or frustration.

2. A Culture That Encourages Crime: Capitalism promotes values like competition, greed, and material success, which can encourage criminal behaviour across all classes. The media strengthens this “culture of envy” by glorifying wealth and consumption, making people feel they must “get ahead” by any means.

3. Non-Economic Crime: Inequality also fuels emotional and social frustration, leading to crimes such as violence, drug use, and vandalism. People at the bottom of society may act out of anger, shame, or resentment toward their situation.

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The Law as a Tool of Power

Marxists argue that the law and justice system are not neutral. They mainly serve to protect capitalist interests and control the working class.

1. Whose Interests Do Laws Protect?

Philosopher Louis Althusser described the law as an Ideological State Apparatus – a system that justifies and maintains inequality.

• Protecting Capitalist Priorities: The law often protects private property, wealth, and profit (Mannheim).

• Reluctance to Regulate Business: Governments avoid strict laws that might reduce profits (Snider).

• Ignoring Corporate Harm: Sociologist Stephen Box noted that serious harm caused by the rich (like unsafe working conditions) is often treated as a civil issue, not a crime. As a result, “crimes of the powerful” are frequently left unpunished.

2. Selective Enforcement and Crime Statistics

Marxists also question the accuracy of Official Criminal Statistics (OCS), arguing they reflect ruling-class bias.

• Selective Law Enforcement: The justice system is harsher on the poor. As Jeffrey Reiman put it, “The rich get richer and the poor get prison.”

• Focus on Street Crime: Crimes committed by poorer people (like burglary) are prosecuted more often than crimes of the wealthy (like tax fraud).

• Ignoring White-Collar Crime: Corporate, political, and financial crimes are widespread but often go unreported or lightly punished.

• Divide and Rule: The focus on working-class crime creates division within the working class. People blame each other for crime rather than questioning the inequalities built into capitalism.

• The Illusion of Fairness: Occasionally, powerful people are punished—but this serves as an illusion of equality, suggesting that “justice applies to all” when in reality, it rarely does.

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Neo-Marxist Critical Criminology

Neo-Marxist Critical Criminology is an important branch of radical criminology.

It combines ideas from traditional Marxism – which focuses on class inequality and capitalism – with social action theories, especially labelling theory, which looks at how people and behaviours are labelled as “criminal.”

The best-known version of this approach is called The New Criminology, developed by Taylor, Walton, and Young in the 1970s.

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Foundations and Key Ideas

Where Neo-Marxists Agree with Traditional Marxists

Neo-Marxists share many of the same concerns as traditional Marxists. They agree that:

• Capitalism is Exploitative: Society under capitalism is built on inequality and conflict. The rich (the ruling class) benefit at the expense of the poor (the working class). These power differences are central to understanding crime.

• The State Serves the Rich: Laws are created and enforced in ways that protect the capitalist class. The justice system, in turn, punishes the poor more harshly while protecting business interests and property.
  
  Official statistics about crime also serve an ideological purpose—they’re constructed in ways that help maintain ruling-class control and shape public opinion.

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Moving Beyond Determinism: The Voluntarist View

Neo-Marxists criticised traditional Marxism for being too deterministic – that is, for suggesting people have little control over their actions.

• Rejecting Passivity: Traditional Marxism tends to see working-class people as victims of capitalism who are forced into crime by poverty or circumstance. Neo-Marxists reject this, arguing that people aren’t just passive victims.

• Choice and Meaning: They believe people have free will and can make conscious, meaningful choices. When someone commits a crime, it’s not just a reaction to poverty—it can be a deliberate statement or a form of resistance against inequality.

• Interpreting Experience: Individuals interpret their experiences of injustice and exploitation, then choose how to respond—sometimes through crime or deviant behaviour.

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Crime as a Political and Conscious Act

Neo-Marxists see crime not as random or senseless but as political and purposeful. It reflects a person’s awareness of the inequalities in society.

1. A Conscious Response: Crime can be a deliberate reaction to feeling powerless or exploited under capitalism.

2. A Political Dimension: For the poor and marginalized, crime can express anger, frustration, or protest against social injustice.

3. Examples of Political Crime:

   • Theft or burglary – may represent an attempt to redistribute wealth.

   • Vandalism – can be a symbolic attack on capitalism’s obsession with property and ownership.

   • Drug use – might be seen as rejecting or escaping materialistic capitalist values.

   • Rioting or protest – can be understood as collective resistance to abuses of power, like police brutality or inequality.

4. Criminals as Agents of Change: Neo-Marxists see criminals not just as victims but as active agents—people who are, consciously or unconsciously, challenging capitalism. Crime can even be viewed as a revolutionary act, pushing back against social injustice.

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The ‘Fully Social Theory of Deviance’

Taylor, Walton, and Young aimed to develop what they called a “fully social theory of deviance.”

This meant combining both structural (Marxist) and social action (interpretivist) approaches to understand crime in all its complexity.

To truly explain any deviant act, they argued, six elements must be considered:

1. The Wider Social Structure: The act must be understood within the unequal power and class system of capitalism.

2. The Immediate Context: Look at the social and economic circumstances surrounding the act.

3. The Meaning of the Act: Consider what the act means to the person who did it—was it rebellion, revenge, survival, or protest?

4. The Reaction of Society: Examine how others respond—how police, the media, and the public label the behaviour.

5. Power and Lawmaking: Ask who has the power to make laws and decide what counts as “crime” or “deviance.”

6. The Effects of Labelling: Explore how being labelled as “deviant” affects people—why some accept that label and commit more crime, while others reject it.

This framework aimed to help explain crime and inspire social change toward a fairer, more equal society.

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Richard Quinney

Richard Quinney is one of the most influential American criminologists linked to Conflict Theory and Radical Criminology.

His work focuses on how capitalism creates inequality and how that inequality shapes both the law and the criminal justice system.

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Quinney’s Role in Conflict and Radical Criminology

Quinney is a leading figure in the conflict approach to understanding crime.

Conflict theorists argue that crime isn’t caused by individual failings or moral weakness, but by social and economic inequality built into the system itself.

Whereas functionalists see law as a neutral force that maintains order, conflict theorists—like Quinney—see it as a tool of power.

Quinney’s Key Ideas:

• Law Serves the Powerful: Those who hold economic and political power define as “criminal” any behaviour that threatens their interests.

• Law Controls the Powerless: The legal system is used to control those without power, such as the poor and working class.

• Unequal Enforcement: Rules and punishments are applied unequally. The behaviours of the poor are far more likely to be criminalized than those of the wealthy.

In Quinney’s view, crime and punishment are not objective realities—they reflect the interests of the ruling class.

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Critique of Capitalism and Crime

Quinney went further than most conflict theorists by arguing that capitalism itself produces crime.

His Main Points:

• Capitalism is “Criminogenic”: The capitalist system depends on exploitation and inequality, which make deviant and even criminal behaviour almost unavoidable for the working class.

• The Poor Are Targeted: The wealthy have the power to create laws that criminalize poverty – for example, punishing theft or public disorder more harshly than corporate wrongdoing.

• Unequal Enforcement: When poor people resist or act out of frustration, they become the focus of law enforcement, while the rich are often protected from punishment.

• Historical Evidence: Quinney pointed to examples such as early 20th-century drug laws, which were heavily enforced against immigrant workers (especially Chinese labourers) as a form of control.
  
  Meanwhile, laws designed to limit corporate power—like antitrust legislation—were rarely enforced against large, wealthy companies.

This shows how the legal system reflects the biases and interests of those at the top of the social hierarchy.

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Quinney’s Key Publication

Critique of the Legal Order: Crime Control in Capitalist Society (1974)

This is Quinney’s most influential book.

In it, he argues that the entire criminal justice system—laws, policing, and punishment—is structured to protect the capitalist class and maintain inequality.

The book became a cornerstone of radical and critical criminology, influencing later Neo-Marxist and Left Realist thinkers.

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Quinney’s Legacy

Quinney’s work is part of critical sociology, a tradition that aims not just to study society but to challenge inequality and push for change.

He showed that:

• Crime cannot be separated from social and economic power.

• Laws reflect the interests of the powerful, not universal justice.

• The criminal justice system helps preserve capitalism, rather than fix its injustices.

His ideas remain central to radical and Neo-Marxist criminology today, inspiring debates about whose interests the law really serves.

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Applications

Radical criminology sees the criminal justice system not as a fair or neutral institution but as one that reflects deep social inequalities.

It argues that crime, punishment, and even the definition of “criminal” are shaped by power, class, and race—and that real justice requires transforming the structures of inequality that create them.

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1. Class Bias

Radical and Marxist criminologists argue that the legal system was built by – and for – the powerful, helping them protect their wealth and control the less powerful.

Selective Lawmaking and Enforcement

Conflict theorists believe that laws and punishments are applied unequally, benefiting those at the top of society.

• Protecting the Wealthy: The law primarily protects the key priorities of capitalism—wealth, private property, and profit. Governments often avoid creating or enforcing laws that might reduce corporate profits or restrict business power.

• Unequal Criminalization: Richard Quinney argued that capitalism creates inequality that makes crime almost inevitable for workers trying to survive. Similarly, Jeffrey Reiman—in The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison—showed that the wealthier a person is, the less likely their crimes are to be treated as criminal.

• Focus on Working-Class Crime: Police and courts focus heavily on “street crimes” like theft or assault, which are more common in poorer areas.
  
  In contrast, white-collar crimes like tax evasion, often committed by the rich, are rarely prosecuted. For example, a person cheating on social benefits may be punished harshly, while a tax-evading millionaire might never face court.

• Victim Discounting: Crimes against poorer victims are often seen as less serious. This process, known as victim discounting, reflects the assumption that crimes matter less when they affect people from lower social classes.

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2. White-Collar and Corporate Crime

A major contribution of radical criminology is highlighting crimes committed by the powerful – which are often ignored in public debate and official statistics.

• Hidden Crime: The rich and powerful commit extensive corporate, white-collar, and state crimes, from financial fraud to environmental damage. These are under-policed and under-punished, and often missing from official crime data.

• Lenient Punishment: White-collar offenders usually receive lighter sentences—probation or short prison terms in low-security facilities—compared to poor offenders convicted of street crimes.

• The Illusion of Fairness: Occasionally, a wealthy person is prosecuted to create the illusion that “justice is equal.” Marxists see this as an ideological tactic—a way to make the system seem fair while hiding the true scale of elite crime.

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3. Policing and Racial Profiling

Radical criminology also examines how the state and police maintain social control, particularly through racial bias and discriminatory enforcement.

Radical and critical criminologists argue that law enforcement targets certain groups – especially racial minorities and the poor – to reinforce existing power structures.

• Questioning Crime Statistics: Official statistics often claim that Black people commit more crimes, but Marxist and interpretivist thinkers argue that these numbers reflect biased policing, not actual criminal behaviour.
  
  Police often patrol poor, urban, and minority areas more heavily, which naturally leads to more arrests in those areas.

• Evidence of Bias: Research shows stark inequalities. For example, Black men in the UK are around eight times more likely to be stopped and searched than White men. Ministry of Justice data confirms this racial bias across most police forces.

• Bias in the Courts: Studies of magistrates and judges show that class, race, and gender biases influence decisions. Juries and prosecutors may rely on stereotypes rather than evidence, reinforcing systemic inequality in sentencing.

• The “Youth Control Complex”: Sociologist Victor Rios describes how institutions like schools, courts, and police collectively “criminalize, stigmatize, and punish” working-class youth, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of control.

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4. Order-Maintenance Policing

Radical criminologists also critique aggressive policing strategies like “Broken Windows” or order-maintenance policing, which focus on controlling minor offences.

• Who Counts as “Disorderly”: These strategies often target poor and minority communities. The label “disorderly” is itself socially constructed—defined by police rather than behaviour.

• Racialized Enforcement: Such policing tends to focus on low-income, minority neighbourhoods, increasing surveillance, arrests, and tension.

• Surveillance and Power: Drawing on Michel Foucault’s ideas, critical theorists argue that modern policing uses surveillance and data as tools of social control, extending state power over everyday life.

• Masking Brutality: “Quality of life” policing can make streets look safer, but critics say it hides real injustices—including excessive force and the criminalization of poverty (for example, arresting homeless people for loitering).

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5. Mass Incarceration

Radical criminologists see mass incarceration not as a response to crime, but as a political strategy to manage inequality and maintain control over marginalized populations.

Structural Causes of Imprisonment

• Economic and Racial Factors: Harsh sentencing policies disproportionately affect the poor and racial minorities. For example, during the 1980s and 1990s, U.S. drug laws punished crack cocaine (used mainly in poor, Black communities) 100 times more harshly than powder cocaine (used mainly by wealthier people). This sentencing gap deepened racial inequality and social exclusion.

• The “New Jim Crow”: Legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that the criminal justice system acts as a modern form of racial segregation. A criminal record can strip people—especially African Americans—of jobs, housing, and voting rights, trapping them in a cycle of second-class citizenship.

• The Failure of Tough Policies: Since the 1970s, the U.S. has pursued “get-tough” policies, leading to over 2.3 million people imprisoned at any given time. Despite enormous costs, these policies have not significantly reduced crime, but have deepened racial and class divides.

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6. Radical Solutions and Victimology

Radical criminology calls for social reform rather than punishment, addressing the root causes of crime.

• Structural Change: To reduce crime, policy must tackle inequality through:

  • Decent jobs and better living conditions.

  • Improved education, job training, and rehabilitation services for offenders.

  • Substance abuse and mental health support before and after incarceration.

• Left Realism and Victim Focus: Left Realists criticized older Marxist theories for ignoring the real harm crime causes in poor communities. Using local surveys like the Islington Crime Survey, they showed how street crime, domestic violence, and racial attacks devastate the lives of the poor.

• Critical Victimology: Critical and feminist victimologists emphasize that power determines who is recognized as a victim.
  
  The state often downplays crimes by the powerful (like corporate or environmental crimes) while failing to protect vulnerable groups—especially women—against issues like domestic violence and sexual assault.

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Criticisms of Radical Criminology

Radical criminology — which includes traditional Marxism, Neo-Marxist Critical Criminology (the “New Criminology”), and Critical Theory — has been highly influential.

However, it also faces many criticisms from both outside and within the radical tradition.

Some of these critiques come from other radical schools such as Left Realism, which emerged as a response to the weaknesses of Marxist theories.

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1. Theoretical and Conceptual Limitations

Economic Determinism and Reductionism

A major criticism of classical Marxist criminology is that it is too economically deterministic — meaning it sees everything in society as being shaped by the economy.

• Overemphasis on Economics: Critics argue that Marxist theory overstates the role of economic relationships, treating them as the main force behind all other aspects of life, including family, education, and religion.

• Passive View of the Working Class: Traditional Marxists often portray the working class as helpless victims of capitalism who are pushed into crime by poverty and inequality, leaving little room for individual choice or agency.

• Ignoring Other Forms of Inequality: Marxism is also accused of focusing too narrowly on class conflict, while overlooking other important sources of inequality such as race, gender, and ethnicity. Feminist critics argue that women have often been marginalized in Marxist theory because of its focus on class and work relationships.

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2. “Left-Wing Functionalism” and Conspiracy Thinking

Ironically, critics say that Marxism sometimes ends up resembling functionalism, the very theory it opposes.

• A Mirror Image of Functionalism: Functionalists believe society works for the benefit of everyone; Marxists flip this idea, arguing that it works only for the benefit of the ruling class.
  Both views risk oversimplifying how complex societies really function.

• Seeing Everything as Serving Capitalism: Some Marxist arguments treat all social institutions as automatically designed to maintain capitalism — a view that can sound too neat and mechanical.

• The “Conspiracy Theory” Critique: Certain versions of Neo-Marxism are accused of implying that the capitalist elite secretly controls everything, reducing complex social dynamics to an all-powerful ruling class pulling the strings.

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3. Empirical and Predictive Problems

Failure to Predict Revolution

A long-standing criticism of Marxism is that it failed to predict history accurately.

Marx believed capitalism would collapse under its own inequalities, leading to a socialist revolution — but this has not happened.

In reality, capitalism has proved remarkably flexible and resilient, adapting to crises rather than collapsing.

In modern societies, especially in the West, a communist revolution seems highly unlikely, contradicting Marx’s original expectations.

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4. Over-Predicting Crime

Traditional Marxism is also criticized for being too deterministic when explaining crime.

• Not All Poor People Commit Crime: Critics point out that many people who experience poverty or inequality do not turn to crime, despite the pressures of a capitalist system. Even Marxist sociologist David Gordon admitted surprise that more working-class people don’t offend.

• Cross-Cultural Differences: Some capitalist countries, such as Switzerland and Japan, have low crime rates, which challenges the Marxist claim that capitalism automatically produces high levels of crime.

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5. Critiques of Neo-Marxist Critical Criminology

The “New Criminology” by Taylor, Walton, and Young tried to overcome classical Marxism’s determinism by emphasizing free will and the political meaning of crime.

But it too has been criticized.

Over-Romanticizing Criminals

Left Realists argue that Neo-Marxists romanticize criminals as “Robin Hood” figures who heroically fight capitalism by stealing from the rich.

• In reality, most victims of working-class and Black crime are other working-class or Black people, not the rich.

• Neo-Marxists are accused of ignoring the real suffering caused by crime in deprived communities.

Inability to Explain All Crime

Neo-Marxists’ claim that crime is a conscious, political act doesn’t hold up for many offences.

• It’s hard to see a political motive behind crimes like domestic violence, murder, rape, or child abuse.

• Many crimes are impulsive, personal, or emotional, not deliberate acts of resistance against capitalism.

Idealism and Lack of Practicality

Critics such as Roger Hopkins Burke (2005) argue that Neo-Marxist theories are too abstract and idealistic.

• The goal of creating a “fully social theory of deviance”—one that explains all crime and helps transform society—is seen as unrealistic.

• The theory offers compelling critiques but few practical solutions for tackling real-world crime.

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6. Methodological and Practical Challenges

Lack of Scientific Testability

Philosopher Karl Popper claimed Marxism is unscientific because it cannot be properly tested or disproved.

Marxism’s belief in the “inevitable fall of capitalism” makes it non-falsifiable—you can’t prove it wrong.

Popper therefore described Marxism as a kind of belief system or faith, not a scientific theory.

Problems with Crime Statistics

Marxists often argue that Official Crime Statistics (OCS) are socially constructed and reflect police bias and ruling-class interests.

While this is partly true, Left Realists say Marxists take this skepticism too far.

It’s unrealistic to claim that all statistics are fake or meaningless.

Left Realists argue that crime data still reflects real harm and real victims, especially in inner-city areas.

Ignoring this evidence, they say, is irresponsible and undermines efforts to address community safety.

Utopian Thinking and Lack of Alternatives

Marxism and Critical Theory are also criticized for lacking practical solutions and relying too heavily on abstract critiques.

• After the collapse of communist regimes, Marxists struggled to define a realistic alternative to capitalism.

• Many Western Marxists focus on exposing inequality rather than proposing workable reforms, leading to accusations of pessimism and passivity.

• Even Critical Theory, which tries to develop ethical principles for a fairer world, faces criticism for sometimes imposing Western or ethnocentric values under the guise of universality.

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References

Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy and other essays. Monthly Review Press.

Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. The New Press.

Bernard, T. J. (1981). Distinction between conflict and radical criminology. J. Crim. L. & Criminology, 72, 362.

Box, S. (1983). Power, crime and mystification. Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Burke, R. H. (2005). An introduction to criminological theory (2nd ed.). Willan Publishing.

Cohen, S. (1998). Intellectual skepticism and political commitment: the case of radical criminology. In The new criminology revisited (pp. 98-129). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Gordon, D. M. (1973). Capitalism, class, and crime in America. Crime and Delinquency, 19(2), 163–186.

Lynch, M. J., Groves, W. B., & Roberts, C. (1989). A primer in radical criminology (pp. 158-158). New York: Harrow and Heston.

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Reiman, J., & Leighton, P. (2020). The rich get richer and the poor get prison: Ideology, class, and criminal justice (12th ed.). Routledge.

Rios, V. M. (2011). Punished: Policing the lives of Black and Latino boys. New York University Press.

Snider, L. (1993). Bad business: Corporate crime in Canada. Nelson Canada.

Taylor, I., Walton, P., & Young, J. (1973). The new criminology: For a social theory of deviance. Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Taylor, I., Walton, P., & Young, J. (1988). Critical criminology. Routledge.

Young, J. (1979). The drugtakers: The social meaning of drug use. Paladin.