Racial Issues in Criminal Justice: The Case of African Americans

African Americans make up about half of the U.S. prison population, and almost a third of African-American men in the twenties are either incarcerated or under probation/parole supervision. The fourteen previously unpublished papers in this anthology illuminate the origins and dynamics of these disproportionate levels of confinement and supervision of African Americans by the U.S. criminal justice system. Chapter topics include: -- the harmful effects of racial profiling; -- the racist application of capital punishment; -- do African-American police make a difference? -- racial characteristics of offenders and victims in television programs; -- corollaries and consequences of "driving while black" policies; -- private prisons and minority incarceration; -- underrepresentation of African-American victims in hate crime research; -- racial bias in the trials of juveniles as adults; -- the myth of black juror nullification; -- affirmative jury selection for racial fairness; -- racial stratification in the academic discipline of criminal justice; and, -- an oppression theory critique of restorative justice.