Toward a Structural Theory of Crime, Race, and Gender: The Canadian Case

Abstract

This article outlines and explores a structural theory of race, gender, and crime. We address past concerns about the use of official data to test theories of crime, and we advocate the renewed use of these data to test such theories. Three structural hypotheses are proposed and tested. Each hypothesis focuses in a different way on the interaction of race, gender, and crime, and the third hypothesis adds a crucial fourth variable—age. Our results support the structural approach proposed and encourage further comparative research.