The Handbook of Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice

Ramiro Martinez, Meghan E. Hollis, Jacob I. Stowell, Ramiro Martinez, Jr., Meghan E. Hollis, Jacob I. Stowell

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781119114086, 9781119114017
• eBook ISBN: 9781119113775
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This Handbook presents current and future studies on the changing dynamics of the role of immigrants and the impact of immigration, across the United States and industrialized and developing nations. It covers the changing dynamics of race, ethnicity, and immigration, and discusses how it all contributes to variations in crime, policing, and the overall justice system. Through acknowledging that some groups, especially people of color, are disproportionately influenced more than others in the case of criminal justice reactions, the "War on Drugs", and hate crimes; this Handbook introduces the importance of studying race and crime so as to better understand it. It does so by recommending that researchers concentrate on ethnic diversity in a national and international context in order to broaden their demographic and expand their understanding of how to attain global change.

Featuring contributions from top experts in the field, The Handbook of Race and Crime is presented in five sections—An Overview of Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice; Theoretical Perspectives on Race and Crime; Race, Gender, and the Justice System; Gender and Crime; and Race, Gender and Comparative Criminology. Each section of the book addresses a key area of research, summarizes findings or shortcomings whenever possible, and provides new results relevant to race/crime and justice. Every contribution is written by a top expert in the field and based on the latest research.

With a sharp focus on contemporary race, ethnicity, crime, and justice studies, The Handbook of Race and Crime is the ideal reference for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars interested in the disciplines such as Criminology, Race and Ethnicity, Race and the Justice System, and the Sociology of Race.

Part I
An Overview of Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice

Introduction

Ramiro Martínez, Jr. and Meghan E. Hollis

The climate of ethno‐racial relations in the United States creates a strain for the criminal justice system and provides a variety of challenges in the study of criminology and criminal justice. Concerns are wide‐ranging and include challenges with racial profiling, the emergence of consent decrees governing localized expectations for police–citizen encounters, the immigrant criminal myth, ethno‐racial disparities in police use of force, racial threat, and the incorporation of racial and ethnic concerns in theoretical explanations of criminality. To address these issues, this volume begins by providing a general overview of race, ethnicity, crime, and justice research.

Part I of this volume provides chapters that focus on a general overview of race and crime (Chapter 1), ethnicity and crime (Chapter 2), the immigration–crime nexus (Chapter 3), concerns with hate crimes (Chapter 4), the intersections of Native Americans and crime (Chapter 5) and Asian Americans and crime (Chapter 6), an overview of racial threat research (Chapter 7), and an examination of deportation concerns as they relate to ethnicity, race, and crime (Chapter 8). A consistent theme in this part is isolation. Many racial/ethnic/immigrant groups reside in segregated communities or isolated areas, and are marginalized from mainstream society and demonized by many. Those groups are represented in these chapters in an effort to provide balanced coverage of a variety of marginalized populations.

This part runs the gamut of research topics on race, crime, and the criminal justice system, providing material as a framework that is central to the chapters in the following parts. The authors cover the breadth of research on racial variations in criminal justice contact, and provide a systematic read of the Hispanic/Latino origin work, including micro/macro examinations and what we know about how Latinos fare in crime and crime‐related outcomes. However, this is more than just a part on race/ethnic variations in crime and criminal justice system contacts, as important as it is to detail these to the reader. This part also provides careful coverage of immigration, crime, and victimization as an issue of enormous importance in contemporary society—particularly given modern political rhetoric.

The first chapter on “Intentional Inequalities and Compounding Effects: The State of Race and Justice Theory and Research” is by Kevin Drakulich and Eric Rodriguez‐Whitney. They contend, like others, that significant race differences in criminal justice contact are not explained by “race” at least in a biological sense. So where and how did these differences emerge within the social structure? Along these lines, Drakulich and Rodriguez‐Whitney argue that explaining differences is often limited in contemporary research, which is dominated by concerns with why those in academic, public, or political spheres advocate explanations implying biological or intrinsic roots to the problem. Rather than reflecting a mere academic or intellectual disagreement, it is in fact crucial to an understanding of why race differences in contact with the criminal justice system emerge and persist. These contentions are examined and explained in this initial chapter.

In Chapter 2 on “Ethnicity and Crime,” Saundra Trujillo and Maria B. Vélez review “ethnicity” both as a concept and a measure in criminological research at the macro and micro levels. The authors discuss the usefulness of including ethnicity in research that seeks to better understand disparities in crime and criminal justice responses. They review “ethnicity” as captured by the self‐identification measures of either Hispanic or Latino status in micro‐level work, and review macro‐level research that uses similar aggregated measures. Undoubtedly the concept of ethnicity among US residents and communities evolves even in the face of measurement difficulty. Still the authors conclude that further studies are warranted on the causes and consequences of crime when examining ethnicity, in part due to its changing boundaries.

Next, in Chapter 3 “Immigration, Crime, and Victimization in the US Context: An Overview,” Pendergast, Wadsworth, and LePree remind us that for at least 150 years fear of criminogenic immigrants has been a heavily politicized and contentious issue. As a result, many immigrant groups were labeled as “dangerous” and heavily stigmatized upon entry into the United States and even afterwards. Indeed, little evidence exists to substantiate the claims that more immigration means more crime. Immigrants demonstrate lower rates of almost all crime categories when compared to the native‐born population, and places with the highest rates of immigration have also experienced some of the biggest crime declines over the last quarter of a century. The authors stress that the concept of legality status requires more research. The undocumented status of many Latino immigrants places them in a high‐risk category. The greater risk of victimization for these individuals arises, in particular, at the hands of native‐born individuals, businesses, and organizations, providing immigrants with little recourse or protection. The authors conclude by discussing a host of methodological issues that make further research on immigration and crime challenging and propose new areas of future study.

Hand in hand with the rise in immigration and crime research is the study of hate crimes. Janice A. Iwama’s chapter on “Hate Crime Research in the Twenty‐First Century” provides an overview on the development of the hate crime legislation, and associated obstacles found in the data collection related this “new” crime. Iwama begins by providing an overview on federal hate crime legislation, including concerns raised by advocacy and civil rights organizations seeking to bring awareness of the rising levels of violence fueled by discrimination and prejudice in the United States. Also discussed is the development of national hate crime data collection efforts, along with the limitations found in each of the datasets with regards to the underreporting and misclassification of hate crime. Although many challenges to studying hate crimes exist, emerging scholarship has taken different approaches to establishing the link between hate crime patterns and social changes in communities across the United States. The author concludes with recommendations for directions on future research.

Chapters on two racial groups long underexamined and underexplored by social scientists, at least in the area of race and crime, focus on Native Americans and Asians. In Chapter 5, “Native American Crime, Policing, and Social Context,” Randall R. Butler and R. Steven Jones note that police on Am...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: Past, Present, and Future
• Part I: An Overview of Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice
• Part II: Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Criminal Justice
• Part III: Examining the Intersections of Race, Ethnicity, and Criminal Justice System Involvement
• Part IV: Examining the Intersections of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Study of Crime and Criminal Justice
• Part V: Comparative Approaches to Studying Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice
• Conclusion
• Index
• End User License Agreement