Race, Crime, and Justice: The Continuing American Dilemma

by Steven E Barkan

Brief, timely, and accessible, Race, Crime, and The Continuing American Dilemma examines many critical issues including why, over the past few decades, African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans were swept into jails and prisons at rates far beyond their share of the national population. Steven E. Barkan explores racial/ethnic disparities in criminal justice involvement; discrimination in policing, prosecution, and sentencing; the rise and collateral consequences of mass incarceration; racial bias in news media coverage of crime; racial/ethnic differences in rates of criminal behavior and victimization; and social and criminal justice policies that, if successfully implemented, would help correct many of the injustices in the criminal justice system.

About the Series
Keynotes in Criminology and Criminal Justice provides essential knowledge on important contemporary matters of crime, law, and justice to a broad audience of readers. Volumes are written by leading scholars in that area. Concise, accessible, and affordable, these texts are designed to serve either as primers around which courses can be built or as supplemental books for a variety of courses.

Genres: Crime

176 pages, Paperback

Published September 14, 2018

Reviews

[Nancy Bandusky]

This is an incredibly biased book. If research cited in the author's own book "proves" something he doesn't like, the author takes on a nearly incredulous tone or attempts to downplay it. If the research instead proves his point that there is excessive racial bias/discrimination within the criminal justice system, he doesn't let the issue be settled but rather brings up, repeatedly, that white collar crime is more harmful and committed the most by whites. This attitude leaves the reader baffled at the author's inability to be objective and stick to the topic, thus doing more harm than good.

[alana ☽]

more maymester reading. i enjoyed the work tied to this book and this class much more than my women in criminal justice class.

[Miss Murder]

I liked this book a lot more than Wilson’s “More Than Just Race”, which I read together. This one is full of statistics and interesting perspectives to the same problems we’ve discussed many times. Where other research books would become dry with the amount of numbers involved, Barkan keeps it interesting and adds valuable information in between.

If you’re interested in crime and race and don’t mind a ton of stats, this one’s for you. I learned a lot from it.

[belle]

read for multiculturalism & diversity 2025sp semester