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Michael J. Leiber, M. J., Mack , K. Y., & Featherstone, R. A. (2009). Family structure, family processes, economic factors, and delinquency: Similarities and differences by race and ethnicity. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, 7(2), 79-99. 

Using data from the Add Health Study, the authors examined relationships among family structure, family processes, and economic factors with delinquency and to what extent similarities and differences may exist for Whites, African Americans, and Hispanics. Results from negative binomial regression analyses indicated that, in general, of the family processes, maternal attachment was consistently found to be an important predictor of nonserious and serious delinquency irrespective of family structure, economic factors, and race and ethnicity.

The results are discussed within the context of Hirschi’s original interpretation of social control theory, and future directions for research are suggested.

Questions that apply to this article:

1. What theories of delinquency do the authors test that suggest that delinquency is related to family structure and economic factors?
2. What associations did the authors find in regard to maternal attachment versus family structure itself?
3. To what extent do similarities and differences exist for Whites, African Americans, and Hispanics in regards to family structure and economic factors and delinquency?

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Baker, D. V. (2008). Black female executions in historical context. Criminal Justice Review, 33(1), 64-88.

This article examines the systemic oppression of executed Black women from the earliest periods of American history. The most consistent factor in Black female executions throughout U.S. history is criminal justice authorities’ executions of Black women largely for challenging gendered and racist exploitation. Colonial and antebellum slavery institutionalized the persecution of slave women, who often retaliated against oppressive brutality by killing White masters. White lynch mobs effectively augmented the legal killing of Black women in postbellum society and lowered Black female execution rates. Reduced to a peonage state in the apartheid of Jim Crow, Black women’s crimes of resistance against White brutality paralleled those of slave women decades earlier. And despite the delusional expansion of civil rights and the sovereignty of Black people over the confines of segregation in the modern era, the racialized sexism of American criminal justice has rendered Black women ever more vulnerable to the death penalty.

Questions that apply to this article:

1. What is the most consistent factor in Black female executions throughout the U.S.?
2. How has the racialized sexism of American criminal justice affected Black women yet today?
3. What was one of the crude measures of the prevalence of White rape of slave women?

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Feld, B. (1999). A funny thing happened on the way to the centenary: Social structure, race and the transformation of the juvenile court. Punishment & Society, 1(2), 187-214. 

Within the past three decades, legal changes have transformed the juvenile court from nominally rehabilitative social welfare agency into a second-class criminal court for young offenders.  The migration of blacks from the rural south to the urban north that began more than three-quarters of a century ago, the structural transformation of cities and the economy over the past quarter of a century, and the current public and political linkages between race and serious youth crime provided the impetus for recent punitive juvenile justice policies.  Two competing conceptions of young people–innocence and responsibility-have facilitated the juvenile court’s metamorphosis from a welfare into a penal organization as policy makers selectively manipulate these competing social constructs to conduct a form of ‘criminological triage’.  At the ‘soft end’, states have shifted non-criminal status offenders out of the juvenile system into a ‘hidden system’ in the private-sector mental health and chemical dependency industries.  At the ‘hard end’, states transfer increasing numbers of youths, disproportionately minority, into the criminal justice system.  In the ‘middle’, states’ sentencing policies escalate the punishments imposed on those delinquents, again disproportionately minority, who remain in an increasingly criminalized juvenile justice system.  These changes in youth sentencing policy reflect both a change in the social construction of adolescence and in strategies of social control.  As a  result, very little remains of  the Progressives’ idea of a rehabilitative juvenile court.

Questions that apply to this article:

1. Why does the author say that the originally rehabilitative philosophy of the juvenile court has gradually been supplanted by a more legalistic and punitive approach to delinquency?
2. How are the dual purposes of the juvenile justice system, of social welfare and law enforcement, inherently contradictory?
3. What is the ultimate result of all these changes?

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Ioimo, R., Tears, R. S., Meadows, L. A., Becton, J. B., & Charles, M. T. (2007). The police view of bias-based policing. Police Quarterly, 10(3), 270-287.

Bias-based policing is an issue that police departments all across the country are addressing. Considering that bias-based policing undermines relationships between the police and the public, a considerable amount of research has been conducted to uncover and prevent the occurrence of bias-based policing. Past research has primarily focused on traffic stops to assess the level of bias-based policing. However, traffic stops are only one of the many ways police interact with the public. As a result, this research project sought to broaden the approach to assessing bias-based policing beyond traffic stop data by surveying police officers to determine if they are aware of bias-based policing practices occurring in police departments, either theirs or others. This research found that 21% of survey respondents believed that bias-based policing is presently practiced by officers in their department, and 25.9% believed that bias-based policing is practiced by officers in other Virginia police departments.

Questions that apply to this article:

1. How do officers view bias-based policing?
2. When comparing white and black officers, what significant differences did the authors find regarding their views of bias-based policing?