Contemporary issues of race/ethnicity, offending behavior, and justice responses

The racial and ethnic composition of the United States has drastically changed over the last few decades. This transformation has important implications for theory, research, policy, and public opinion surrounding the topic of race/ethnicity and our justice systems. According to 2010 US Census data, Whites comprised 72% of the general US population, while African-Americans represented 13%. However, in 2012, African-Americans were arrested at a disproportionate percentage (28%) (US Department of Justice 2012). Disaggregating these statistics across age, White and African-American juveniles represented 10% and 12% of all arrests in 2010 (juvenile arrests as a percentage of total arrests), respectively (Snyder and Mulako-Wantota 2014). Even though White youth represented 65% of juvenile arrests in 2012 compared to their representation in the US juvenile population (79%), African-American youth were overrepresented again, comprising 32% of all juvenile arrests while representing 14% of the juvenile population (Puzzanchera 2015; Puzzanchera, Sladky, and Kang 2015). Therefore, racial disparities throughout the juvenile justice and adult criminal justice systems continue to be a contentious topic in the field of criminology and criminal justice.

Throughout the literature, general explanations for the overrepresentation of minorities as offenders and their presence in the juvenile and criminal justice systems have focused on differential offending/involvement and differential selection/racial bias. The differential offending explanation argues that race differences in offending and court processing are due to minorities committing more crime and more serious and/or violent crime compared to Whites (Hindelang 1978; Pope and Snyder 2003; Sampson and Lauritsen 1997). Minorities are subjected to increased social control based on a variety of legal factors, such as more serious offenses, extensive prior record, and frequent recidivism. The differential selection argument on the other hand, suggests that race differences in social control are based on overt and/or covert negative stereotypes that decision-makers (e.g., police, prosecutors, judges, etc.) hold against minorities (Graham and Lowery 2004; Zatz 2000). However, either explanation may not be mutually exclusive.

For instance, in light of the accumulated knowledge to date about race differences in juvenile justice and criminal justice processing, I entirely agree with Ulmer’s (2012) argument that we as researchers have not fully investigated the mechanisms by which legally relevant factors (i.e., offense severity, prior record, legal counsel, etc.) mediate or moderate the effects of race/ethnicity on court outcomes (see also Spohn 2000). Therefore, it does not suffice to only address whether ‘race or ethnicity matter’ in predicting offending or court processing, but rather research should seek to understand the conditions under which the race or ethnicity of an individual influences involvement in our justice systems. These conclusions have the potential to add more breadth and depth to the differential offending vs. differential selection argument for minority overrepresentation. Continued research in this direction (which includes a few articles in the special issue) is needed in order to more accurately comprehend how race/ethnic effects may be conditional on legally relevant factors.

In addition, the last number of years has also seen an increase in individuals who identify themselves as Hispanic, from 9% (in 1990) to 12.5% (in 2000) to 16.3% (in 2010) throughout the general US population (U.S. Census Bureau 1990, 2000, 2010). Currently, Hispanics are the largest minority population in the United States. This increase as the fastest growing minority population poses empirically and policy relevant questions surrounding the presence of ethnic disparities in sentencing decisions and immigration-crime nexus (Feldmeyer and Ulmer 2011; Hartley and Armendariz 2011; Ousey and Kubrin 2009). While official crime statistics have been unable to fully capture the relationship between immigration and crime, public opinion, and media perceptions often argue that increases in immigration in the United States results in increases in crime (Martinez and Lee 2000). However, empirical studies have found that immigration has an inverse relationship with crime (Ousey and Kubrin 2009), and that first-generation immigrants engage in less delinquent and criminal behavior compared to native-born individuals (Bersani 2012).

Most recent, media depictions of the relationship between race and social/criminal injustice have reawakened the question of race relations in twenty-first-century America. Prior research finds that media portrays both social ideologies and race relations in ways that reinforce stereotypical beliefs (Gray 1987; Hall 1995; Spratt, Bullock, and Baldasty 2007; Squires 2011). While the media expressed that the United States has moved beyond racism with the election of President Obama (Bonilla-Silva and Dietrich 2011; Valentino and Brader 2011), recent situations have emphasized how racism (whether overt or covert) may still be a current American issue. Events such as the Trayvon Martin incident (Gabbidon and Jordan 2013), Ferguson riots (Cobbina, Owusu-Bempah, and Bender, in this issue), and Ronald Johnson shooting in Chicago have increased the presence of race-related reporting in media.

All of the above-mentioned facets relate to the title of the special issue ‘Contemporary Issues of Race/Ethnicity, Offending Behavior, and Justice Responses.’ The purpose of the issue is to highlight contemporary topics surrounding the overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities throughout both the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. The 13 articles in the issue encompass a board range of themes surrounding formal sources of social control (e.g., police, courts, corrections) as well as perceptions and public opinions of topics that focus on the relationship between race/ethnicity and offending behaviors. The contributors to this special issue provide the field with innovative insight into how race and ethnicity interconnect with all aspects of criminology and criminal justice, but also help encourage future directions of research.

The first four articles intersect race and ethnicity with factors lesser known in the literature to influence criminal justice sentencing as a form of social control. The combination of race and/or ethnicity with prior juvenile adjudications, (immigrant) deportability status, minority threat and juvenile status, and changes in community characteristics adds to the complexity of the influence of race/ethnicity in the outcomes of criminal defendants. In the lead article, Ulmer and Laskorunsky’s research titled ‘The Role of Juvenile Adjudications in the Disproportional Incarceration of African-American and Hispanic Defendants’ explores juvenile adjudication as a component of criminal history and its influence on sentencing decisions for White, African-American, and Hispanic adult defendants. Using Pennsylvania sentencing data from 2006 to 2010, results demonstrate that while juvenile adjudications did not directly affect jail or prison incarcerations, a juvenile record increased the likelihood of sentencing departure both above and below sentencing guidelines. A juvenile record influenced the likelihood of receiving a prison sentence to the disadvantage of African-American men, but not other racial/ethnic groups (Ulmer and Laskorunsky, in this issue). Since African-American men on average have greater criminal history scores compared to similarly situated Whites and Hispanics, this disparity contributes to later sentencing outcomes. Therefore, the legal characteristic of criminal history may indirectly detriment African-American men and result in disproportionate imprisonment of this specific race/gender group. This study addresses a critical component in court decision-making, in that sentencing guidelines may want to reconsider the role that juvenile adjudications play in criminal history scores.

The next research study by Orrick, Compofelice, and Piquero titled ‘Assessing the Impact of Deportable Status on Sentencing Outcomes in a Sample of State Prisoners’ provides a distinct examination of how an official measure of deportability status (designated as ‘deportable’ by ICE and having a detainer in a foreign country) influences state-level sentencing decisions. Using propensity score matching with a cohort of incarcerated male offenders in a Southern state in 2009, results show that inmates with deportable status received shorter sentences compared to matched non-deportable inmates (Orrick, Compofelice, and Piquero, in this issue). No differences across deportable status were found with regards to the likelihood of receiving a life or death sentence. The findings speculate that judges may sentence non-citizens to shorter sentences to reduce the time until deportation, and may also not perceive criminal immigrants as more threatening than native-born offenders. Since little empirical attention has been given to assess how offender deportability status influences criminal sentencing, Orrick and colleagues’ research investigates both a public opinion and policy-relevant research question. Future research will benefit from exploring this topic area at earlier stages of criminal justice decision-making in order to disentangle public and political perceptions from empirical findings.

In Jordan and Maroun’s research titled ‘Minority Threat and Criminal Sentencing: Examining Juveniles in the Adult Criminal Justice System,’ the authors consider the role that racial and ethnic threat plays in the sentencing decisions and sentence lengths of juveniles waived to adult court. While a recent body of literature has examined community influences of minority threat on juvenile court outcomes (Leiber, Peck, and Rodriguez 2016; Thomas, Moak, and Walker 2012), there is a void in the literature that has investigated this theoretical perspective on the treatment of juveniles in the adult criminal justice system. Based on multi-level analyses of data for all juveniles charged in the adult criminal justice system in 1998, results showed that the effects of racial and ethnic threat depended on the nature of the sentencing decision, specific type of threat, and juvenile characteristics (Jordan and Maroun, in this issue). For instance, Hispanic youth were given longer prison sentences in communities characterized by ethnic threat. The findings suggest that the criminal justice system is influenced by both community-level and offender characteristics, in that perceived minority threat does results in consequences for minority youth who are charged in adult court.

Next, Hester and Sevigny explore changes in socioeconomic disadvantage, crime rates, county political makeup, and county caseload on incarceration and sentence length decisions in their study ‘Court Communities in Local Context: A Multilevel Analysis of Felony Sentencing in South Carolina.’ Examining both community-level and case characteristics, results indicate that greater socioeconomic disadvantage increased the likelihood of incarceration for all offenders regardless of race, while counties with heavier caseloads were less likely to incarcerate offenders than those with lighter caseloads (Hester and Sevigny, in this issue). Community-level measures did not influence sentence length decisions. Consistent with the focal concerns theoretical perspective of sentencing (Steffensmeier, Ulmer, and Kramer 1998), offenders who were young, Black, and male had higher likelihoods of incarceration that could not be explained through legal factors (e.g., prior criminal record, offense seriousness, etc.). These results continue to suggest the presence of racial disparities in incarceration and sentence length decisions in a state with no sentencing guidelines and a partially indeterminate sentencing structure. Race effects emerged even after various contextual measures that have been found to predict criminal sentencing in prior research were considered (Britt 2000; Johnson 2005; Wang and Mears 2010).

In the next study, Gau explores sources of racial disparities in jury representativeness in the research titled ‘A Jury of Whose Peers? The Impact of Selection Procedures on Racial Composition and the Prevalence of Majority-White Juries.’ Using data collected from 2013 to 2014 in a Southeast state, racial comparisons were first made across counties, venires, and panels. Race differences were then examined across type of venireperson outcome (removal for-cause, preemptory-strike removal, seating), preemptory strikes by party (prosecution, defense), and for-cause removal reason (partiality, hardship, language). Results reveal a selection process that systematically whites venires and panels even though there is racial heterogeneity in the two counties from which jury venires are drawn (Gau, in this issue). The processes for selecting jurors, delivering summons, and guaranteeing their appearance in court contribute to the whitening of juries more so than expected, but preemptory strikes and for-cause removals continue to be related to race. Specifically, prosecutors appear to use their strikes disproportionately against African-American venirepersons, while defense attorneys seem to target White venirepersons. Gau’s policy-relevant study advocates better-quality methods for counties in drawing venires, considering a broader range of sources (above and beyond voter registration and driver’s license data), improving communication with eligible venirepersons where English is a second language, and perusing ways of decreasing race-based preemptory strikes.

The next four studies focus on the intersection of race and ethnicity with various aspects of the juvenile justice system. Prior research tends to show that minority youth are often the recipients of disadvantaged court outcomes and fewer treatment services compared to similarly situated Whites (Bishop and Leiber 2011; Fader, Kurlychek, and Morgan 2014; Puzzanchera and Hockenberry 2013). The articles included in this subsection focus on the conditioning effects of prior offending, weapon and drug offenses, presence and type of legal counsel, and mental health services on the treatment of youth from different racial and ethnic backgrounds within the juvenile court. Leiber’s research titled ‘Race, Prior Offending, and Juvenile Court Outcomes’ examines the effect of race, number of prior referrals, and severity of last prior referral on juvenile justice decision-making at four stages (detention, intake, adjudication, and judicial disposition). Using Bishop and colleagues’ (2010) integrated theoretical perspective of focal concerns and ‘loose coupling,’ the findings suggest that while race and indicators of prior offending directly influenced certain case outcomes, interrelationships between both factors were not found to exist consistently across all four stages. When indirect or interaction effects emerged, both Whites and African-Americans were the recipients of disadvantaged outcomes depending on the specific race/prior offending combination (Leiber, in this issue). Since Bishop and colleagues (2010) theoretical argument is stage-specific, Leiber provides one of the few empirical examinations of this perspective.

In the following study, Sullivan, Mueller, Gann, Spiegel, and McManus highlight the role of race and offense type on five juvenile court decision points in their research titled ‘Weapon and Drug Offenses and Juvenile Disproportionate Minority Contact: An Impact Assessment and Practical Discussion.’ Using a mixed methods approach in examining juvenile case files and interviews with court actors, results from quantitative analyses show that racial disparities emerged at varying decision points. Race also interacted with weapons and drug offending, where African-American youth charged with a weapons-related offense acted as an aggravating factor at detention, and the combination of being African-American and charged with a drug offense resulted in greater social control prior to and at the adjudication stage (Sullivan et al., in this issue). Qualitative results find that police officers and juvenile court actors perceive weapons and drug offending disparities in court outcomes based on disadvantaged structural conditions of where youth reside. Due to limited studies that have examined disproportionate minority contact through a mixed methods or qualitative approach (c.f. Leiber 2003; Gaarder, Rodriguez, and Zatz 2004), Sullivan and colleagues provide a triangulated view of how offense type influences the decision-making process and possibly contributes to racial disparities in the juvenile justice system.

Next, Peck and Beaudry-Cyr’s research titled ‘Does Who Appears before the Juvenile Court Matter on Adjudication and Disposition Outcomes? The Interaction between Client Race and Lawyer Type,’ focuses on the conditioning effect of presence and type of legal counsel (public defender vs. private attorney) on the relationship between race and two juvenile court outcomes (adjudication, judicial disposition) in two states. Using micro-level interpretations of the symbolic threat hypothesis (Tittle and Curran 1988) and minority group power threat perspectives (Blalock 1967; Hawkins 1987) as two competing theories, results demonstrate diverse findings depending on the state and specific stage. In some situations, African-American youth with a public defender acted as an aggravating factor in decision-making, while in other circumstances, African-American youth who retained private counsel resulted in more severe treatment (Peck and Beaudry-Cyr, in this issue). In other scenarios, the presence of a public defender resulted in more social control that was not race specific. The article adds to the literature by attempting to theoretically explain why the presence and type of legal counsel may condition the effect of race on court outcomes across two geographical locations.

The next article by Spinney, Yeide, Feyerherm, Cohen, Stephenson, and Thomas titled ‘Racial Disparities in Referrals to Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services from the Juvenile Justice System: A Review of the Literature’ connects the topic of minority overrepresentation in the juvenile justice system with disparities in the utilization of mental health and substance abuse services. This systematic review dissects 20 years of empirical research to examine the presence of race differences in the decision to refer juvenile offenders to treatment services. Results reveal that the majority of studies indicated race differences that disadvantaged minority youth, and that factors other than mental health status and diagnoses often predict who receives treatment (Spinney et al., in this issue). Importantly, this finding suggests that joint efforts by the juvenile court and mental health systems are needed to understand why there are differences in access to treatment before, during, and after involvement in the juvenile justice system.

The next two studies focus on the interrelationship between race/ethnicity and different correlates of offending behaviors in adults and juveniles. Mitchell’s research titled ‘The Effect of Drug Arrest on Subsequent Drug Offending and Social Bonding’ investigates the collateral consequences of drug arrests (marijuana use, hard drug use, involvement in drug sales) on measures of social bonding (educational attainment, employment outcomes) for Whites, African-Americans, and Hispanics. Using 13 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97), results show that drug arrests did not deter later drug use or involvement in drug sales (Mitchell, in this issue). Furthermore, prior drug arrests negatively influenced employment prospects, but only for African-Americans. Mitchell’s insightful research connects punitive policies surrounding the war on drugs with criminological theory and empirical research to suggest that targeting low-level drug offenders does not reduce later drug offending, and has considerable unintended consequences for minorities.

Paralleling this topic area, Piquero, Cardwell, Piquero, Jennings, and Reingle-Gonzalez explore racial/ethnic differences in over 30 individual, familial, and contextual risk factors related to re-arrest in their study ‘How well do the Adolescent Risk Factors Predict Re-arrest Frequency across Race/Ethnicity among Serious Adolescent Offenders?’ Using a sample of White, Black, and Hispanic serious adolescent offenders from the Pathways to Desistance study, results indicate that many similarities existed with respect to risk factors and re-arrest frequency across racial/ethnic groups. In fact, the findings suggest that more general criminological theories may be applicable across racial/ethnic groups, instead of racial/ethnic-specific frameworks and intervention strategies to decrease offending behaviors (Piquero et al., in this issue). This is a significant inference, as there is a gap in the literature that has examined the extent to which risk factors operate similarly across minority groups, especially Hispanics in an offender-based sample.

The final two articles address perceptions and public opinion surrounding the topics of race, policing, and how courtroom criminal behavior and defense strategies may be racialized. Cobbina, Owusu-Bempah, and Bender investigate the extent to which minorities racially typify crime, and whether African-Americans associate crime as an African-American phenomenon in the same manner that they perceive police racialize crime. Their study titled ‘Perceptions of Race, Crime, and Policing among Ferguson Protestors,’ provides a unique opportunity to examine perceptions of crime and policing in a sample of protestors in Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting of Michael Brown. Results from qualitative in-depth interviews reveal three major themes among the protestors in regards to racial disparities in criminal offending and how they believe police view members of different racial groups (Cobbina, Owusu-Bempah, and Bender, in this issue). Explanations include racial differences in types of criminal behavior; the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on criminal offending; and the influence of media depictions of both citizens and police officers’ beliefs of African-American criminality. The research by Cobbina and colleagues solidifies the need to improve police–community relations through social, economic, and political means, especially during a time where issues of race relations are once again making headlines in the media.

The last article by Douds, Howard, Hummer, and Gabbidon titled ‘Public Opinion on the Affluenza Defense, Race, and Sentencing Decisions: Results from a Statewide Poll’ explores whether individuals support the idea that extreme wealth contributes to delinquent behavior, whether affluence should be considered a factor in criminal sentencing, and whether the affluenza defense is applicable to both White and African-American defendants. Results demonstrate that males and individuals with lower education levels believed that wealth is a predictor of delinquency, yet none of the measures influenced beliefs about life circumstances being considered in criminal sentencing (Douds et al., in this issue). Furthermore, individuals with lower education levels and Republicans were more likely to believe that African-Americans and White youth would have the same chance of success with an affluenza defense. Respondent race only marginally impacted perceptions of wealth as a factor for delinquency, but none of the other research questions. Although Douds and colleagues acknowledge the limitations of their exploratory study, the research emphasizes the understudied affluenza defense and how public opinion views criminal sentencing since the controversial decision of Molina v. Couch.

Overall, the studies included in this special issue address a wide range of research areas that have important implications for racial and ethnic minorities. Future research should accept the challenge of identifying additional mechanisms that may mediate or moderate how race and ethnicity relate to public opinion, offending behavior, and involvement in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. To conclude, I would like to thank Dr Michael J. Leiber, the current Editor of the Journal of Crime and Justice, for providing me the opportunity to be a Guest Editor for this special issue. I would also like to thank the current Managing Editor, Maude Beaudry-Cyr, for working in close liaison with Taylor & Francis throughout this project. Finally, thank you to the reviewers of this special issue, who provided valuable insight and suggestions to improve the quality of each article.

Notes on contributor

Jennifer H. Peck is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida. Her recent research has been accepted for publication in Justice Quarterly, Crime and Delinquency, and Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice. Her research interests include the role of race and ethnicity in the juvenile justice system and criminological theory.

Jennifer H. Peck, Ph.D.
Guest Editor, Journal of Crime and Justice
Department of Criminal Justice
University of Central Florida
[email protected]