ABSTRACT
SES is viewed by most sociologists as a depoliticized smooth continuum, whereas radicals tend to think in terms of a class as a very politicized dichotomy of haves and have nots. This is the two-class model-“the overwhelming majority of respectable people on the one hand and the lumpenproletariat on the other”—that Travis Hirschi (1969: 71) believes constitutes the true class-crime relationship implicit in most theories of crime. In this chapter we will examine crime and the “truly disadvantaged”; those unfortunates at the very bottom of the socioeconomic heap.
