Reviews
“This mini-primer on what’s right for a “clean name” is one of the many frank exchanges in Identity Thieves: Motives and Methods, a new book by two innocent-looking associate professors: Heath Copes, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Lynne M. Vieraitis, at the University of Texas at Dallas.”—Chronicle Review
“This book puts on the front burner one of the more serious white-collar crimes of the 21st century. Using interview data, Copes (Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham) and Vieraitis (Criminology, Univ. of Texas, Dallas) provide stories beyond accounts of hit-and-run computer hackers. This book is perhaps best described as a practitioners’ source, including those in federal agencies as well as professionals involved in rehabilitating this type of offender.”—Choice
“This book is a valuable contribution to our empirical knowledge of identity theft and to the growing body of literature examining crime and criminality from the offender’s perspective. The book will be of interest to a variety of criminologists; those who are interested in the offender’s perspective and criminal decision making, as well as those who study property or white-collar crime, will definitely want to add this to their personal libraries. Its writing is clear and crisp, making it suitable for use in upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level courses on qualitative criminology, property crime, and white-collar crime. Copes and Vieraitis have produced the definitive volume on identity theft; it is a welcome addition and valuable contribution to the theoretical and empirical literature.”—International Criminal Justice Review
Endorsements
"This entertaining and readable book combines insightful ethnography and sophisticated criminological theorizing in an investigation of the people who engage in the much publicized but little studied crime of identity theft. Copes and Vieraitis do an excellent job of describing who the offenders are, why and how they commit their offenses and what might be done to prevent identity theft in the future."—Michael L. Benson, School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati
"The so-called Great American Crime Drop that began in the mid-1990s might more accurately be described as the Great American Crime Shift. Even as street crime plummeted, other forms of criminality increased, including identity theft. In this incisive book, Heith Copes and Lynne Vieraitis explore the motives and methods of identity thieves, shedding new light on a changing criminological landscape—an important glimpse into the future of crime in the United States and beyond."—Richard Wright, Curators' Professor of Criminology, University of Missouri–St. Louis
