Book Review: Women, Crime and Criminal Justice

The Politics of Criminal Victimization: Pursuing and Resisting Power

“…Yet analysis of the interactions between victims and perpetrators ultimately centered on whether the attributes of a victim—the clothing they wore or the streets they frequented—made them more or less vulnerable to particular criminal acts. The broader relational aspects of the victim-criminal actor dyad were overshadowed by an approach ultimately critiqued for its preoccupation with establishing the degree to which the victim was to blame for their own victimization (Mukherjee 1983, 121). It is here where we can harness insights from political science’s longstanding study of power, domination, and subordination to advance our understanding of the politics of criminal victimization.…”

Theft on trial: Prosecution, conviction and sentencing patterns in colonial Victoria and Western Australia

“…It is largely limited to the convict era and early settlement, with a particular focus on bushranging (Elliot, 1995; Perkins & Thompson, 1998; West, 2009). Australian criminologists compiled some useful long-term statistics in the 1980s on a limited number of larcenous acts, but no attempt was made to place them in the context of a historical narrative (Mukherjee, Jacobsen, & Walker, 1989). This lacuna is particularly surprising, given the relevance of theft statistics to the continuing discussion of the legacy that convictism left in the colonies (Braithwaite, 2001).…”