ABSTRACT
The typical offender is popularly represented as young, male and working-class, from a ‘dangerous’ area and often from an ‘outsider’ group. This pervasive assumption, reinforced in the media, is reflected in political and policy priorities in Scotland as elsewhere. It must, however, be subjected to critical scrutiny. While, for example, the criminal justice process is indeed dominated by people from working-class backgrounds, this can partly be accounted for by the focus of policing and criminal justice on crimes which are perceived to be policy priorities, perceptions which tend to neglect middle-class or white-collar crimes (an issue which is also picked up in Chapter 7, this volume). This is further related to a focus on class and offending rather than victimisation. This chapter will focus on inequalities of social class and socio-economic status, while later chapters focus on other dimensions of inequality and stratification, in particular gender and ethnicity. It will explore the complex relationships between crime, victimisation and social inequalities, with a specific focus on Scotland, and contrast images of crime and deprivation with the less high-profile crimes of the middle classes. It will then turn to the criminal justice process and to issues of criminalisation.
