Diversity in Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies

Derek M.D. Silva, Mathieu Deflem

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781801170031
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Volume 27 of Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance discusses a variety of issues of significance to equity, inclusion, and diversity in criminology and criminal justice studies. The research area of crime, criminal justice, and social control has typically devoted attention to diversity in its subject matter much more than in the profession and scholarship itself.

By and large, the disparities in the criminal justice system are much better known than the inequities that exist in criminology and among scholars of criminal justice. The authors in this volume demonstrate the theoretical and methodological maturity and diversity in reflexive accounts of criminology and criminal justice in a number of areas, such as and teaching and research in criminology, queer criminology, the intersections of race and gender, indigeneity and decolonization, domestic violence, human rights, mass incarceration, LBGTQI+ rights, and ableism. Presenting a state-of-the-art overview of diversity in criminological and criminal justice methodologies, this volume should be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students in the fields of criminology, sociology, law, justice policy, and criminal justice.

PART I

DIVERSITY IN THE PROFESSION

CHAPTER 1

DIVERSITY IN TEACHING AND RESEARCHING CRIMINAL LAW AND CRIMINOLOGY

Frances P. Bernat

ABSTRACT

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to examine the field of criminal justice and assess how diversity influences what is taught and, how research is conducted in the field.

Methodology/approach – This chapter looks at the historical exclusion of feminist and integrative theories on crime and criminal justice. A socio-legal analysis of how the increase in the number of women faculty and faculty of color has influenced teaching and research in the field of criminal justice.

Findings – As more women and persons of color become faculty and practitioners in the field of criminal justice, then more diverse perspectives will be promoted. It is not enough to change a discriminatory law or engage in affirmative action to hire more women and persons of color, it is important to understand how preconceived biases about women and non-white persons impact who we define as criminal, how we educate students in the field, and how we respond to the needs of offenders and victims.

Originality/value – Research on diversity in the field of criminal justice has focused on historical discrimination. More research is needed on the impact that diversity has in research performed and what is being taught in the field of criminal justice.

Keywords: Diversity; criminal justice education; criminal justice research; criminological theory; cultural diversity; equity

INTRODUCTION

In the United States, affirmative action in the mid-twentieth century meant that state and federal agencies needed to address the historical and social-structural issues that placed African Americans behind the starting line for employment, education and other social advancement opportunities. Litigation about affirmative action and its implementation has been winding its way through the American courts over the past 60 plus years. During this time, courts also redressed discrimination claims from other disadvantaged groups; including women, children, inmates, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and persons with disabilities. Federal and state laws and policies have been enacted to ensure that public officials provide equity among majority and minority communities. The laws and policies do not necessarily mean that a particular individual from a disadvantaged group will be hired or admitted to a particular school. The laws and policies are meant to ensure that persons from a disadvantaged group are brought to the same starting line as persons from similarly situated non-disadvantaged groups. At the present time, diversity policies require employers and schools to be attentive to the many factors that may negatively impact a person from a disadvantaged group and engage in practices to ameliorate discrimination.

Diversity in higher education requires us to be attentive to the social, cultural, political, and demographic makeup of the faculty in a particular discipline. The characteristics of a discipline’s faculty can affect the focus and advancement of theory and research, and the educational attainment of students. If faculty have homogeneous characteristics and experiences then the theoretical research performed in a discipline, and what is taught to students, may not move the discipline and human knowledge forward. In the field of criminal justice, criminology and criminal law faculty must challenge themselves to learn and unlearn what they think they know and believe. They need to create and open up new spaces for the advancement of our understanding of the social institutions of law and criminal justice through the lens of inclusion, diversity, and equity.

Many decades ago, Thomas Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolution. The text was intended originally for physical science disciplines but its application to the field of social science was, and still is, profound. Kuhn (1970) argued that scientific advances occur initially as a slow methodical application of existing knowledge until someone advances a revolutionary idea that propels the field forward into unexpected ways of new discoveries and scientific advances. Kuhn contended that when looking historically at discoveries, scientists generally plod along and accept the precedents set out by their predecessors as they incrementally add to an understanding of the world around us. Overtime, newly acquired knowledge of the world does not comport with the preconceived notions that the field had previously held to be factual. When a field of study’s previous ideas can no longer comport with current knowledge learned through scientific discovery, then the newly discovered truths result in a paradigm shift; a revolution. The field may not easily disregard the old maxims; and there can be strong resistance to accept the new ideas and truths. But, eventually, the older ideas or accepted truths in the discipline must fall to the wayside. According to Kuhn, change is needed because without the major paradigm change, without a challenge to the existing status quo, there would not be major scientific discoveries and human advancement. Kuhn (1970, p. 22) states:

That is why a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom or never just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re-evaluation of prior fact, an intrinsically revolutionary process that is seldom completed by a single man and never overnight. No wonder historians have had difficulty in dating precisely this extended process that their vocabulary impels them to view as an isolated event.

Nor are new inventions of theory the only scientific events that have revolutionary impact upon the specialists in whose domain they occur. The commitments that govern normal science specify not only what sorts of entities the universe does contain, but also, by implication, those that it does not. It follows, though the point will require extended discussion, that a discovery like that of oxygen or X-rays does not simply add one more item to the population of the scientist’s world. Ultimately it has that effect, but not until the professional community has reevaluated traditional experimental procedures, altered its conception of entities with which it has long been familiar, and, in the process, shifted the network of theory through which it deals with the world. Scientific fact and theory are not categorically separable, except perhaps within a single tradition of normal-scientific practice. That is why the unexpected discovery is not simply factual in its import and why the scientist’s world is qualitatively transformed as well as quantitatively enriched by fundamental novelties of either fact or theory.

Addressing issues of diversity is transformative for the field of criminal justice. The second half of the twentieth century witnessed many social, cultural, and political changes. These changes were initially piecemeal but by the beginning of the twenty-first century we can see that there is a paradigm shift in understanding and responding to diversity; the shift has been met with some resistance and concern by those persons who want to maintain the slow augmentation of theory and its application to diverse communities. Many criminological theories of the last century are being reconfigured but rarely are they cast aside. The emergence of late twentieth theories such as Critical Race Theory and Feminist Theory are not easily reconciled with the myriad of established theories because they contest basic assumptions about women and persons of color. Feminist Theory is not usually acknowledged by, or addressed within, traditional mainstream schools of criminology and the term “feminism” is posited as being antagonistic to men rather than a challenge to patriarchy (see, for example, Belknap, 2015). Perhaps not surprisingly, Critical Race Theory is being dismissed in the United States by persons who do not want to discuss or acknowledge the impact of historical racism on society (see, for example, Diaz & Zanona, 2021). This chapter will explore diversity in the field of criminal justice. First, diversity in the field will be explained. Second, diversity of faculty in criminal justice will be addressed. Finally, the impact of diversity on the discipline will be analyzed.

DIVERSITY IN THE FIELD OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Criminal justice is a field of study that includes: criminological theory and research; policy recommendations for policing, corrections and the courts; application of the criminal law which seeks to balance the needs of the state against the rights of the individual; and, inquiry into new areas of crime and punishment. It would be simplistic to say that the field has shown a steady progression of knowledge on crime and punishment since the time of Cesar Lombroso in the nineteenth century. Lombroso is known as the Father of Criminology because he created a systematic study of offenders by looking at the physical characteristics of persons housed in prisons and determining that they are atavist, biologically inferior people.

In the development of criminological theory, the norm to addressing what is crime and who are the offenders has been to assess what (white) men do, or do not do, and why. Criminological theory ignored female offenders because their numbers were historically very low. Interestingly, Lombroso did study a small sample of women in his nineteenth century analysis of offenders (see Lombroso, Ferrero, Rafter, & Gibson, 2004). He posited that offenders were born criminal. As with male offenders, he viewed female offenders as atavistic, biologically inferior people. In the author’s preface to his book, Lombroso in 1892 (Lombroso et al., 2004, p. 36) wrote:

The lesser frequency of the criminal type among female criminals appears to contradict the fundamental principle of our theory of the born criminal. But it actually confirms the theory because it is linked to women’s lesser frequency of degeneration and of cortical epileptic irritation, a condition that lies at the root of criminality.

A very unusual contradiction is presented by the coexistence of cruelty and compassion in women. It can be resolved by recognizing the influence of maternity, which often leavens cruelty with sweetness. Maternity, together with women’s lesser intelligence, strength, and variability, explains why women are not only less moral but also less criminal than men. Women’s lesser criminality, their atavism, and men’s rapacious sexual desire help us understand why women are less likely to be born criminals than born prostitutes. Logic alone could not lead one to this conclusion.

By the early twentieth century, much of his theoretical propositions were rebuked by scholars who advanced social theories on crime and offending and rejected biological determinism as the cause of male crime. The rebuke was based on the knowledge of new fields of inquiry: sociology, psychology, and political science (Gunnison, Bernat, & Goodstein, 2017). Problematically, the characterization some offenders as biologically inferior to men lasted well into the twentieth century despite criminologists’ rejection of this premise as it applied to male offenders. Women offenders were characterized as “evil” and “manipulative” and could hide their criminality from men who wanted to protect them (see, for example, Bisi, 2002; Estrada, Nilsson, & Pettersson, 2019). According to Lombroso, the more atavistic a person, and remember he posits that females are all inferior biologically to males, then the more their biology will prevail over social influences that can thwart criminal offending. Women offenders were called “whores” or “bitches” if they transgressed from their assigned role as a wife or mother; they were characterized as unfeminine and masculine. Lomboso’s influence is still felt when studies on the physical characteristics and propensities of offenders are measured and analyzed in terms of criminological theory (Beaver, Barnes, & Boutwell, 2014).

As social and psychological factors in the field of criminology were examined throughout the twentieth century to explain male offending behaviors, female offending continued to be explained by female biology. Criminologists posited a variety of theoretical constructs to explain male offending patters. Among the most common theories to explore male offending are: social strain theory, labeling theory, social control theory, and life-course theory (Gunnison et al., 2017). These theories posit that males commit crime because they cannot achieve the American dream through legitimate means and exp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Diverse Voices in the Fields of Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Part I. Diversity in the Profession
• Part II. Decolonizing Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies
• Part III. Axes of Inclusion and Exclusion
• Index