Racial-ethnic discrimination is a type of injustice that influences the lives of Black and Latinx individuals. It can lead to a variety of negative outcomes, such as intimate partner violence (IPV). To develop a greater theoretical understanding of how discrimination may lead to IPV perpetration, we drew on the Theory of African American Offending (TAAO). This theory is useful because of the focus on racial-ethnic injustices, mediating processes, and possible buffers to negative outcomes from racial-ethnic socialization and racial-ethnic identity. To test the theory, we drew on a sample of Black and Latino/a adults across the United States collected from an opt-in research platform. We found evidence for the core pathways in the theory such that discrimination increased anger, depression, and IPV perpetration, and reduced self-control. There was some evidence of emotions and self-control acting as partial mediators. Anger was especially important. The results for racial-ethnic socialization and racial-ethnic identity were more mixed, but both of those areas suggested possible avenues of intervention. Overall, these results provided evidence of the enduring impact of discrimination, expanded the testing of TAAO, and suggested ways to ameliorate those negative impacts.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly being integrated into the United States criminal justice system under the promise of efficiency and objectivity. This article challenges that narrative, arguing that AI-powered surveillance technologies, particularly facial recognition and predictive policing, function as new vectors for systemic racism. Through a critical examination of federal studies, seminal journalistic investigations, and recent documented cases of wrongful arrest, this paper demonstrates how these systems are not merely biased but serve to automate and scale discriminatory practices. Landmark studies, such as those by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), reveal that facial recognition algorithms exhibit significantly higher error rates for racial minorities. Furthermore, case studies of predictive tools like COMPAS show a clear racial disparity in risk assessments. The analysis concludes that these technologies create a dangerous feedback loop: biased data from historically over-policed communities trains algorithms to identify those same communities as high-risk, thereby justifying and intensifying their surveillance. This process launders historical prejudice through a seemingly neutral technological interface, entrenching racial inequality and posing a profound threat to justice.
Finney critically investigates the racialization of nature and outdoor areas in the USA, disputing the concept that environmentalism and wilderness work as racially neutral forums. Through a combination of historical research, cultural critique, interviews, and autoethnographic reflection, the book shows how African American ties to land, recreation, and environmental belonging have been shaped by slavery, segregation, and regimes of representation. Although the work's conceptual relevance is widely acknowledged, this evaluation also points out some important limitations, such as its uneven geographic focus and its limited interaction with particular outdoor exclusionary locations, such as national parks in the northern and western USA.
Introduction: Racial disparities are documented throughout criminal-legal processing and are often attributed to discretionary legal decision making. Although prior research has shown how racial disparities can be introduced, maintained, or amplified with each decision, less is known about how criminal-legal professionals interpret disparities. Aim: This study examined how criminal-legal system stakeholders perceive the causes of racial disparities in their community. Methods: We administered a cross-sectional survey to 223 residents in a single Midwestern jurisdiction, including law enforcement agents (21.1%), prosecutors (13.9%), public defenders (4.5%), judges (2.2%), community corrections officers (12.6%), and system-impacted residents (45.7%). Participants rated the extent to which various factors contribute to racial disparities and which different professionals contribute to or could address them. Results: Most participants attributed racial disparities to both structural and interpersonal factors—particularly socioeconomic status, different opportunities, and unconscious bias and stereotypes. Judges, police, and prosecutors were seen as the most responsible for and capable of addressing disparities. Law enforcement agents, however, uniquely emphasized individual-level factors like criminal behavior, suggesting a more interpersonal framing of disparities. Conclusion: As perspectives of disparity varied across roles, our findings necessitate deeper analysis to understand how each stakeholder's decisions contribute to cumulative inequality and foster cross-role collaboration.
Despite substantial evidence disproving a link between immigration and crime, news media frequently suggest otherwise. As one of the most widely consumed sources of crime information, local television news can play a crucial role in shaping these narratives. While prior research has documented the medium's tendency to overrepresent racial minorities as perpetrators of violent crime, less is known about how immigrants are depicted in local television crime coverage or how these portrayals have evolved amid shifting political discourse on immigration. We conducted a content analysis of a nationally representative sample of local television newscasts of immigrant-involved violent crime aired between 2008 and 2018 to assess how immigrants are portrayed in this coverage. Our findings reveal a persistent pattern of asymmetrical representation where immigrants are depicted as perpetrators nearly three times as often as they are portrayed as victims—a disparity that widened significantly after 2014. Coverage more frequently emphasized the undocumented status and Latin American origin of perpetrators than of victims. The pronounced rise in portrayals of undocumented perpetrators coincided with escalations in anti-immigrant rhetoric that began during the 2016 presidential campaign, suggesting a convergence between media framing and political discourse.
This study investigates racial disparities in specialty court participation in Indiana, focusing on drug, veterans, and reentry courts between 2013 and 2020. Using multilevel modeling and principal component analysis, results indicate that Black individuals are significantly underrepresented in drug courts and overrepresented in reentry courts relative to arrest rates and county demographic composition. Informed by Critical Race Theory and inhabited institutions perspectives, these patterns are interpreted as reflecting organizational and structural processes that shape access to specialty courts prior to case-level decision-making. Findings suggest that observed disparities in participation align more closely with institutional mechanisms that structure eligibility and access to specialty courts than with individual discretionary decisions alone. Policy implications point toward the importance of examining how referral systems, program capacity, and administrative practices may be unevenly structured across court types and jurisdictions. More broadly, the study highlights persistent structural inequalities in access to diversion and specialty court programs and points to the importance of institutional and longitudinal analyses of specialty court access.
Impact of Race and Culture Assessments (IRCAs) aim to contextualize how systemic oppression, anti-Black racism, and structural inequities shape individuals’ involvement with the Canadian criminal legal system. While IRCAs provide critical information to courts, current approaches often lack a trauma- and violence-informed perspective and do not sufficiently explore the historical and institutional forces that shape racialized experiences. This article introduces a Trauma- and Violence-Informed IRCA (TVI-IRCA) model grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT), counter-storytelling, and structural analysis. The model reframes legal assessment by emphasizing structural violence, intergenerational racial harm, and the cumulative effects of surveillance, economic marginalization, and criminalization. Through a critical analysis of current IRCA practices, the article identifies gaps including inconsistent application across jurisdictions, judicial resistance to systemic framing, and the potential for retraumatization when assessments individualize harm. A composite case illustration demonstrates how the model can be operationalized in IRCA writing to support contextualized, justice-oriented sentencing. The article concludes with implications for practice and policy, recommending national standardization, mandatory anti-racism and trauma-informed training for legal professionals, expanded access to IRCAs, and integration of wraparound supports. The TVI-IRCA model advances a more equitable sentencing framework that centers systemic context, racial trauma, and structural accountability.
On October 20, 2014, Chicago police fatally shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times. More than a year later, activists forced the release of the police dashcam video, prompting public outrage, political fallout, and a Department of Justice investigation that led to Chicago's agreement to a consent decree for police reform in January 2019. This study engages Hallin’s model of public spheres alongside Squires’ theorization of oppositional publics to examine Chicago Tribune and Chicago Defender coverage of the years-long aftermath of McDonald's murder. I theorize 2015–2019 as a conjunctural crisis, marked by rampant public mistrust of State-sponsored institutions, that momentarily shifted public discourse into a “sphere of deviant consensus.” Using grounded theory coding procedures, I elaborate discursive themes and shifts within and across each newspaper's coverage to demonstrate the ideological struggle that played out through the popular. The results of the textual analysis demonstrate nuances, fluidity, and contradictions in each newspaper's role in and as the public sphere. These findings offer insight into the possibilities and limitations of news media to disrupt dominant public consensus and advance counterhegemonic public discourse.
Aggravated assault remains a significant form of urban violent crime, yet limited research has examined its geographic clustering alongside demographic disparities. This study analyzes aggravated assault arrests in Houston using Houston Police Department data (N = 30,718) from 2017 to 2019. Employing descriptive statistics, geospatial analysis, and logistic regression, we assess racial/ethnic, age, and district-level patterns in aggravated versus non-aggravated arrests. Findings reveal notable disparities, with Black individuals and youth—particularly those aged 17–20—experiencing higher odds of aggravated assault arrests. While district-level effects were not statistically significant, descriptive spatial patterns indicate variation in arrest concentration across areas. Interpreted through structural and spatial frameworks, these results highlight the role of broader social inequalities and place-based dynamics. Despite limitations of arrest data and coarse geographic units, this study underscores the value of integrating spatial and quantitative approaches to inform targeted, equitable violence prevention strategies.
During the Spring 2020 uprisings, the American Sociological Association professed an alignment with the goals of racial justice and gender equity. These statements, however, were met with those of the many BIPOC sociologists, who countercharged the discipline with a legacy of violent forms white male exclusivity. Today, this legacy of exclusivity arguably remains the most evident within faculty hires and promotions. Although the mechanisms behind this debarment have been unclear, scholars in other disciplines have noted that academic journals play an integral role. To investigate if this could be the case within sociology, we interrogated the publication practices of the American Sociological Review , the flagship publication in the field. We examined who was published between 2018 and 2022. Our research reveals that white people accounted for 80% of all ASR publications, with white men alone commanding 48%. Black women and men, by contrast, comprised a combined 2% of published authors. Only ∼10% of articles used an intersectional approach. We conclude that while as a discipline sociology propounds upon the merits of racial and gendered inclusion, its top publication favors white men doing race-and-gender blind research, which advantages white men on the tenure track.
The topic of firearm enforcement in the USA increasingly raises questions about the intersection of administrative regulation, neighborhood violence, and racial inequality. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 29 African American men in Chicago who were arrested for illegal firearm possession and had completed a court-mandated diversion program, this study examines how participants understood their decisions to carry firearms in the context of high neighborhood violence and complex licensing requirements. Although classified as low risk based on validated risk assessment measures and limited criminal histories, participants described carrying firearms primarily for perceived self-protection. The findings introduce the concept of bureaucratic disenfranchisement to describe how administrative complexity, licensing costs, and processing delays may interact with safety concerns to shape pathways to criminalization. Rather than evaluating the objective effectiveness of firearm carrying, this study centers participants’ perceptions of safety and legality and situates them within the broader scholarship on administrative burden and legal cynicism. The findings contribute to research on criminalization, regulatory governance, and racial disparities in firearm enforcement.
In the current study, we examined perceptions and features of positive police-youth encounters, both enforcement and non-enforcement in nature, between Black young people and sworn police personnel from a single large US metropolitan city. Data were collected from young people during individual interviews (N = 35) and from sworn police personnel within focus group discussions (N = 10 focus group discussions, 50 total personnel). We used an inductive approach to code qualitative data. Three subthemes emerged for positive non-enforcement interactions: (a) extracurricular interactions, (b) police assistance, and (c) other positive examples. Three subthemes also emerged for positive enforcement encounters: (a) respect and transparency, (b) limiting harmful police-youth encounters, and (c) policing skills to promote procedural justice. Both groups appreciated experiences reflecting procedural justice. Findings point toward the promise of a shared vision between Black young people and police that will require dedication and effort to achieve. Ultimately, this study suggests that harmful outcomes are not inevitable but instead reflect differences in police mindset and approach. Our findings also underscore the need for greater investment of existing policing resources into community-oriented and restorative policing efforts, as well as increased funding to support the communities in which they work.
A number of studies indicate biased coverage of Black Lives Matter (BLM), as well as misinterpretations among the public and police officers of slogans endorsed by the BLM organization (e.g., Defund the Police). How BLM is portrayed by mass media can shape public support and one's understanding of BLM, including police officers who are assigned to police BLM-related protests. The current study examines how officers come to understand BLM and how their knowledge of BLM may influence their beliefs regarding BLM protests. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 36 police officers employed at two police departments in Virginia, a year after the 2020 George Floyd protests. Thematic findings reflected a lack of knowledge about BLM, conflicting attitudes about BLM protests, and the impact of race and upbringing on how BLM is perceived. Overall, findings suggest that officers’ understanding of BLM is nuanced, with some officers distinguishing between the BLM organization (e.g., administrative criticisms) versus the BLM movement (e.g., the ensuing protests). Implications discussed are related to improving the mechanisms used to inform the police about BLM, which may impact police-community interactions during times of civil unrest.
This study revisits public support for the use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) in policing, with a specific focus on examining the multifaceted role of race and ethnicity. We test two models in which race and ethnicity shape attitudes toward BWCs by contextualizing two prominent factors: instrumental concern and procedural justice. Using a nationally representative sample of 3,306 U.S. adults, we examine the indirect effect of race and ethnicity through path analysis (generalized structural equation modeling [GSEM]) and their moderating effects with OLS regression. Compared to Whites, African Americans expressed greater skepticism about BWCs’ ability to reduce police use of excessive force, which in turn lowered their support for BWCs. Both African Americans and Hispanic/Latino respondents viewed the police as less procedurally just, further reducing BWC support. Moreover, the positive association between procedural justice and BWC support was weaker among African Americans than among Whites. Our findings highlight the significance and multifaceted role of race and ethnicity in shaping public perceptions of police reforms such as BWCs. In this context, building trust in minority communities requires open communication, genuine collaboration, and a clear acknowledgment of past injustices.
Previous research has linked protests against police violence with reductions in police-involved killings. However, the conditions under which these protests are most effective remain largely unknown. This study draws on insights from protest scholarship and theories of institutional anomie, social capital, and collective efficacy to explore whether social institutions shape the geographic distribution of police killings and moderate protest efficacy. Findings from county-level negative binomial regression models reveal that Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in 2020 were associated with a decline in deadly police-citizen encounters. Local commitments to the economy and military had direct and positive correlational effects on police-caused deaths, while commitment to education and family significantly reduced fatalities. The local polity and education moderated protest efficacy, whereby the protective role of BLM protest was strengthened at high levels of electoral participation and in counties with low educational commitment. Marginal effects for measures of family vitality and military veteran concentration approached conventional levels of statistical significance, suggesting potential moderating effects warranting further investigation. Together, these results suggest that local institutional contexts shape police killings of American civilians and help explain why protests appear more effective in some areas than others.
Minority threat theory hypothesizes that police exert greater coercive control over racial/ethnic groups perceived as dangerous in cities with relatively large and residentially segregated minority populations. One line of research testing this hypothesis examines the relationships of percent minority and minority segregation with the incidence of police-caused homicide. The limited research on Hispanics provides little supporting evidence for minority threat theory. However, past studies do not consider the possible influences of Southwest region and the relative size of foreign- and native-born Hispanic populations on police-caused homicide. In the present study, we incorporate these variables into a cross-sectional analysis of Mapping Police Violence police-caused homicide data in cities of 100,000 or more population in 2010. There were positive main effects of Southwest region in each analysis. There were also interactions involving Southwest region and nativity. Percent native born had a positive relationship with the total incidence of police-caused homicide in the Southwest but no relationship outside that region. Percent foreign born had a negative relationship with police-caused homicide of Hispanics in the Southwest and no relationship outside that region. Hispanic-White segregation had a strong positive relationship with both outcome variables that did not vary by region. Taken together, the findings indicate that Hispanic nativity, region, and residential segregation shape patterns of police-caused homicide in ways not captured in past research. They also reveal the need for more nuanced conceptualizations and empirical tests of minority threat theory.
A substantial body of research has examined the public's perceptions of the police, typically showing that Black Americans, and to a lesser extent Hispanic Americans, hold less favorable views than White Americans. This tendency toward a racial gap also extends to estimates of police procedural justice, but the literature has not assessed whether racial differences are more pronounced in some situations than in others. The current study analyzed data from a large national survey of U.S. residents about their encounters with police officers to test whether the type of contact between police and citizens affected the racial gap in public perceptions of procedural justice. We found that Black and Hispanic respondents were more likely to report police procedural injustice than White respondents, and these differences were larger when contact had been initiated by the police than when an encounter had been initiated by the citizen.
We investigated racial and ethnic differences in police trust among people who self-reported having previously viewed a video of police violence against Black people. Comparative Conflict Theory and intersectional considerations served as the theoretical framework for the research. Using data collected by the Pew Research Center, we tested four hypotheses, with racial/ethnic/gender-related findings. Trust in police among Black people was impacted more than other racial ethnic groups after viewing a video of police violence against Black people. An intersectional approach found that Black women were more likely than women of other racial and ethnic backgrounds to decrease their trust in police. We also examined whether there was an impact on police trust based on basic literacy in Black American history. Our results revealed that increased literacy in Black American history resulted in lower trust in the police. Finally, our study revealed that the level of police trust did not decrease among respondents who believe there has been racial progress in the United States. Considering these findings, we discuss the importance of literacy in Black American history in sensitizing the public to the stability of police violence against Black people in the United States.
