View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

"With a distinguished cast of scholars, this book makes a major contribution to the field in its framing of a very complex social problem."
--Simon I. Singer, author of "Recriminalizing Delinquency: Violent Juvenile Crime and Juvenile Justice Reform"

"The most comprehensive treatment to date of the relationship between race, ethnicity, and crime. This collection will be valuable to practitioners and criminological theorists alike because it contains vast amounts of data on the topic, then orders and interprets these data with a strong socio-historical lens, enhanced by a comparative perspective."
--Troy Duster, author of Backdoor to Eugenics

"Shines a new, critical light on race, ethnicity, crime and justice. The text pushes us to consider how these terms are defined, what's missing from our conventional analyses and ultimately why and how race matters in discussions of justice."
--Katheryn Russell-Brown, author of "The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment, and Other Macroaggressions"

"The editors have assembled a stellar group of scholars and researchers and what one discovers in these chapters is innovative conceptualization, and creative research using mixed methods. The problem of race/ethnicity, crime, and justice looms large in America and this collection is a must read for those seeking a better understanding of the latest research in this critical area of inquiry and the many unanswered questions that future research must address."
--John H. Laub, co-author of "Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70"

In this authoritative volume, race and ethnicity are themselves considered as central organizing principles in why, how, where and by whom crimes are committed and enforced. The contributors argue that dimensions of race and ethnicity condition the very laws that make certain behaviors criminal, the perception of crime and those who are criminalized, the determination of who becomes a victim of crime under which circumstances, the responses to laws and crime that make some more likely to be defined as criminal, and the ways that individuals and communities are positioned and empowered to respond to crime.

Contributors: Eric Baumer, Lydia Bean, Robert D. Crutchfield, Stacy De Coster, Kevin Drakulich, Jeffrey Fagan, John Hagan, Karen Heimer, Jan Holland, Diana Karafin, Lauren J. Krivo, Charis E. Kubrin, Gary LaFree, Toya Z. Like, Ramiro Martinez, Jr., Ross L. Matsueda, Jody Miller, Amie L. Nielsen, Robert O'Brien, Ruth D. Peterson, Alex R. Piquero, Doris Marie Provine, Nancy Rodriguez, Wenona Rymond-Richmond, Robert J. Sampson, Carla Shedd, Elizabeth Trejos-Castillo, Avelardo Valdez, Alexander T. Vazsonyi, MarA-a B. VA(c)lez, Geoff K. Ward, Valerie West, Vernetta Young, Marjorie S. Zatz.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

"With a distinguished cast of scholars, this book makes a major contribution to the field in its framing of a very complex social problem."
--Simon I. Singer, author of "Recriminalizing Delinquency: Violent Juvenile Crime and Juvenile Justice Reform"

"The most comprehensive treatment to date of the relationship between race, ethnicity, and crime. This collection will be valuable to practitioners and criminological theorists alike because it contains vast amounts of data on the topic, then orders and interprets these data with a strong socio-historical lens, enhanced by a comparative perspective."
--Troy Duster, author of Backdoor to Eugenics

"Shines a new, critical light on race, ethnicity, crime and justice. The text pushes us to consider how these terms are defined, what's missing from our conventional analyses and ultimately why and how race matters in discussions of justice."
--Katheryn Russell-Brown, author of "The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment, and Other Macroaggressions"

"The editors have assembled a stellar group of scholars and researchers and what one discovers in these chapters is innovative conceptualization, and creative research using mixed methods. The problem of race/ethnicity, crime, and justice looms large in America and this collection is a must read for those seeking a better understanding of the latest research in this critical area of inquiry and the many unanswered questions that future research must address."
--John H. Laub, co-author of "Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70"

In this authoritative volume, race and ethnicity are themselves considered as central organizing principles in why, how, where and by whom crimes are committed and enforced. The contributors argue that dimensions of race and ethnicity condition the very laws that make certain behaviors criminal, the perception of crime and those who are criminalized, the determination of who becomes a victim of crime under which circumstances, the responses to laws and crime that make some more likely to be defined as criminal, and the ways that individuals and communities are positioned and empowered to respond to crime.

Contributors: Eric Baumer, Lydia Bean, Robert D. Crutchfield, Stacy De Coster, Kevin Drakulich, Jeffrey Fagan, John Hagan, Karen Heimer, Jan Holland, Diana Karafin, Lauren J. Krivo, Charis E. Kubrin, Gary LaFree, Toya Z. Like, Ramiro Martinez, Jr., Ross L. Matsueda, Jody Miller, Amie L. Nielsen, Robert O'Brien, Ruth D. Peterson, Alex R. Piquero, Doris Marie Provine, Nancy Rodriguez, Wenona Rymond-Richmond, Robert J. Sampson, Carla Shedd, Elizabeth Trejos-Castillo, Avelardo Valdez, Alexander T. Vazsonyi, MarA-a B. VA(c)lez, Geoff K. Ward, Valerie West, Vernetta Young, Marjorie S. Zatz.

To what extent does racial discrimination exist within the criminal justice system, and to what extent is that inequality in crime and justice an outgrowth of structured societal inequality? The empirical picture of racism and criminal justice is complex, and although a large body of valuable research on the intersection of race and crime exists, new and innovative research is needed. This special volume of The ANNALS lays a solid foundation for that research. Examining the causes, consequences, and potentially dynamic and interactive processes that sustain racial and ethnic differences in criminal offending, victimization, and justice processing, this volume of The ANNALS takes an important step toward presenting cutting-edge empirical research in this area. It takes an expansive and critical view of the relationships among race, ethnicity, crime, and justice. The provocative articles included in this volume are an outgrowth of the work of the Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network (RDCJN), which was originally organized to bring together a diverse group of scholars to stimulate, conduct, and support scholarship that deepens and challenges current knowledge on racial and ethnic differentials in all aspects of crime and justice. This volume is organized into three broad sections that represent the types of emergent research from this network of scholars and focuses on patterns, processes, and consequences: * Section I discusses patterns of race-ethnic inequality in crime and justice. * Section II investigates specific social processes that link race/ethnicity to inequitable patterns of crime and justice. * Section III emphasizes the societal consequences of racialized crime and justice patterns, processes and policy. This volume of The ANNALS provides an innovative approach to understanding the ways that race, ethnicity, crime, and justice are interconnected within the racialized U.S. society, but it also fosters solutions to inequalities in the criminal justice arena. Students, scholars and policymakers will find this collection of cutting-edge articles avoids taking a one-size-fits-all approach to problems of inequity and offers meaningful and novel perspectives to this complex volume.