Respectable Citizens - Shady Practices seeks to explore a previously neglected aspect of crime in modern society - namely those crimes that are committed by otherwise 'respectable' citizens in the market arena. The book delves into the 'grey zone' where illegal, unfair, unethical, and 'shady' practices coalesce: from the retailers who see themselves as victims of customers who take unfair and often illegal advantage of generous offers, to the consumers sold 'useless' insurance and financial packages and 'defrauded' by 'small print' clauses.The authors outline the contours of the contemporary moral economy, driven and shaped by technological innovation as much as new economic policies, and ask, is a 'predatory society' emerging from the central sphere of consumption?

Stephen Farrall is a research professor in Criminology at the University of Derby. Previously he was Professor of Criminology, and Director of the Centre for Criminological Research, at Sheffield University. Farrall has also taught at Keele University, the University of Oxford, and was a Visiting Fellow at the Australia National University. He has his D.Phil from the University of Oxford and is a member of the British Society of Criminology and the ORCID research community.
Susanne Karstedt is a Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University, Australia, since 2015. Before she held Chairs in Criminology at Keele University and the University of Leeds, UK. She has widely researched and written on cross-national and cross-cultural comparisons of crime and justice, including violence, state crime, and atrocity crimes. She has been the recipient of several awards, most recently the 2019 Freda Adler Distinguished Scholar Award from the Division of International Criminology of the American Society of Criminology. In 2018 she was elected as a member of the Jury for the Stockholm Prize in Criminology.