Race, Crime, and Criminal Justice

Abstract

Fifty years ago, the U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice under PresidentJohnson did not frequently mention race and ethnicity in its discussion of and recommendations for the criminal justice system, but it did have a lot to say about race and crime. Through the use of arrest rates to measure racial differentials in criminal involvement, the Commission concluded that Blacks commit more crime as a consequence of Black people living in greater numbers in criminogenic "slum" conditions. To address racial differences, the Commission favored the Great Society programs of Johnson's War on Poverty. Contemporary criminologists continue to debate the racial distribution of crime, the causes of crimes, and the best policies to reduce crime and racial differentials. The Commission did not anticipate the current debate among scholars regarding how much racial disproportionality exists in the criminal justice system and its causes and consequences. The policies that led to mass incarceration have been significant drivers of continued criminal justice racial disparity. Those policies are inconsistent with the recommendation in The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (1967), upending the pursuit of a more fair and just system.

Critical Criminology and Race: Re‐examining the Whiteness of US Criminological Thought

“…Racism, capital and patriarchy are central to understanding the history and evolution of modern criminal justice systems (for example, police, courts, corrections). In the United States context, racial disparities can be seen at virtually every stage (Fernandes and Crutchfield 2018; Peterson 2012; Peterson, Krivo and Russell‐Brown 2018; Sawyer 2020). Such systems, however, exist independently from academics and their research output.…”