BOOK REVIEW The Differential Representation of Women and Men in Crime, Victimization, and the Criminal Justice System The Gender of Crime. By Dana M. Britton, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011. 184 pp. $24.95 (paperback). ISBN: 978–1442209701 Shannon K. Jacobsen Published online: 24 August 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 In The Gender of Crime, Dana Britton offers a critical and thought-provoking examination of how criminology as a discipline has largely ignored the intersections of various social inequalities in individuals’ likelihood of engaging in crime or being victimized. Focusing exclusively on U.S. society throughout the text, she also explores the role that the policies and practices of the criminal justice system (CJS) play in further perpetuating these inequalities. While the title of the book suggests that one will read about the ways in which the commission and punishment of crime is gendered, it is rather deceptive, as Britton convincingly argues that the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality are all integral to the daily functioning of our CJS. Although she does generally concentrate on the role of gender in crime, Britton also successfully shows how crime and the operations of the CJS have been deeply influenced by and continue to reinforce the social constructions of gender, race, class, sexuality, and their associated inequalities. The way the book begins is quite indicative of the flow of the remainder of the text, as Britton effectively relies on concrete examples to illustrate her concepts and key points (whether referring to school shootings, specific drug laws, hate crimes, or influential Supreme Court cases), which serve to persuade her reader that gender, race, class, and other social statuses influence the occurrence of crime and are indeed woven into the policies and practices of the CJS. The timeline of recent school shootings that is presented at the outset of the first chapter, for example, details the locations, victims, and perpetrators of the crimes. Britton then proceeds to explain the key elements that were largely ignored by media coverage of these incidents – that the shooters were generally white, middle-class boys and that their victims were often girls. With this tangible example, Britton is immediately able to convince her readers that masculinity and violence are inextricably linked, one of the central theses of her book. That is, she demonstrates the importance of turning a gender lens on crime by asking “how gender shapes the patterns of offending and victimization we observe in our society” (p. 2). The timeliness of this argument is highlighted even further as Britton reviews recent crime statistics, broken down separately by race, class, sex, and other characteristics, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that illustrate why placing a gender lens on crime is so critical in this historical moment. She asserts that crime is one of the few social phenomena that exemplify the many issues associated with social stratification. Within her first chapter, Britton presents an intricate and comprehensive examination of the ways in which the legal definition of crime is socially constructed to only include acts committed by individual people (as opposed to corporations and the government), while also providing a concise review of influential gender studies literature (e.g., Connell 2002; Fausto-Sterling 2000; Humphreys 1975; Kessler and McKenna 1978; Miller 1998; West and Fenstermaker 1995; West and Zimmerman 1987) to clarify concepts that will be used in the remainder of the book. Both of these sections would be useful to a variety of readers. Those who already have a solid grasp on crime and gender literature will appreciate the brief review of the key concepts and their origins, while students and others just learning about the topic will quickly gain an understanding of existing theory and research that will assist in their comprehension of the pages that follow. S. K. Jacobsen (*) George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA e-mail: sjacobse@gmu.edu Sex Roles (2012) 66:293–295 DOI 10.1007/s11199-011-0065-7