Race, Ethnicity, Crime and Punishment in the United States

Catalog description

This course investigates the complex socio-historical forces that influence race/ ethnicity, crime and punishment in the U.S. from a criminological/sociological perspective. As such, this course interrogates the experiences of various racial and ethnic groups (e.g. Blacks, Latinos, European Immigrants and Asians) within the U.S. criminal legal system, focusing on the role of the system as a means of social control of these groups. After a brief overview of racial inequality in the U.S., we examine the criminalization of racial and ethnic groups, the distribution of crime and victimization among various racial and ethnic groups, theoretical perspectives on the race/ethnicity and crime relationship, and then turn our attention to the role of race and racism in the component parts of the criminal legal system, namely policing, courts and the various punishment regimes.