No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Critical Race Theory Meets the NYPD: An Assessment of Anti-Racist Pedagogy for Police in New York City
Abstract
This research describes and assesses Critical Race Theory (CRT) pedagogy in a higher education ethnic studies course for police officers. CRT pedagogy aims to help students overcome “color-blind” thinking, which minimizes awareness of racism, by raising their critical understanding of racism and framing it as a pervasive and institutionalized reality that everyone has a responsibility to change. Using the Color Blind Racial Awareness (COBRA) Scale, critical awareness in three cluster areas, white privilege, institutional discrimination, and blatant racism, is measured among those completing the ethnic studies course and a comparison group of officers completing a different college course for police. Conclusions reflect on the impact of the course on students’ awareness of racism, the correlation of identity and awareness of racism, the hypothetical impact of such awareness in policing and possibilities for future research.
... Additionally, research shows that a lack of critical perspectives can perpetuate discriminatory perceptions (Carrington, Donnermeyer & DeKeseredy, 2014;Lynch, McGurrin, & Fenwick, 2004). For instance, Bornstein, Charles, Domingo, and Solis, (2012) found that when students do not learn about race-based prejudices and systemic inequities, they are not mindful of the realities of racism, which can perpetuate inequities through their professional roles (Lipsky, 1980;Walters & Kremser, 2016;Weick, 1995). ...
... 39). Similarly, Bornstein et al. (2012) found that CRT-based ethnic courses increased students' awareness of White privilege, institutional discrimination, and blatant racism. While all students from the CRT-based course made significant gains in critical awareness, White males made the most drastic changes (Bornstein et al., 2012). ...
... Similarly, Bornstein et al. (2012) found that CRT-based ethnic courses increased students' awareness of White privilege, institutional discrimination, and blatant racism. While all students from the CRT-based course made significant gains in critical awareness, White males made the most drastic changes (Bornstein et al., 2012). As seen in the literature, CCJ educators who include critical theories to the curriculum use them to teach the historical, social, and political factors that affect criminality and crime control efforts. ...
This multi-case study centers on how Criminology/Criminal Justice (CCJ) professors enact and refine a teaching approach that helps students understand how practices from their field of study can reinforce systemic discrimination and its harmful consequences. These are practices that have disproportionately threatened the physical, emotional, and/or economic conditions of communities with limited socio-political power. This research is important because college instructors play an influential role in preparing and enhancing the country’s workforce. Thus, if college instructors do not prepare students as critically-minded professionals, then students may reproduce practices that can lead to detrimental social, political, and economic outcomes for the country as a whole. Given the importance of critical teaching in higher education, I specifically examined professors’ beliefs, perceptions, and actions related to how they enacted and refined their critical teaching approach. I collected data from interviews, class observations, course materials, and student focus groups and interviews. With a conceptual framework grounded in faculty agency and critical teaching, I found professors in this study a) use the experiences of justice-involved people and practitioners to re-socialize students to have a “realistic” understanding of CCJ; b) have knowledge, dispositions, and resources that contribute to their experimental capacity with teaching; and c) increase student success when they enact instructional equity. This study suggests that college instructors can be catalysts to mitigating social inequities when they include subject-matter content on the people impacted by systemic discrimination, and instructional strategies that enable learning and persistence among students impacted the most by systemic discrimination.
... For example, although police officers viewed race-related education as helpful, they often reported having a strong emotional reaction to the material, specifically on the removal of racial bias or increase of awareness and understanding of racism (Whitfield, 2019). CBRI is a contemporary belief that has been studied (Bornstein et al., 2012;Hughes et al., 2016;Lee et al., 2021). ...
... Evaluation data on the effectiveness of racism education programming among law enforcement is less convincing than it is for other community groups (Bornstein et al., 2012;Schlosser, 2013;Zimny, 2015). Part of the issue is that racial beliefs may influence how officers process the content presented in such education efforts. ...
Studies suggest shorter term racial diversity education is ineffective in changing police officers’ attitudes and behaviors, partly due to strong emotional reactions and resistance to this type of content ( Schlosser, 2013 ; Zimny, 2015 ). In this investigation, we explored across two studies whether police recruits’ racial beliefs were related to their level of cognitive engagement in a racial literacy education program. Consistent with the research hypothesis, findings from Study 1 with 81 mostly White male police recruits suggested that recruits with higher color-blind racial beliefs (i.e., greater denial or minimization of institutional racism) as assessed in the first two weeks of the academy were less cognitively engaged in 10 hours of racial literacy education that they received in the training academy. In Study 2, we replicated and extended the results with a separate sample of 74 police recruits. In addition to completing a measure of color-blind racial beliefs at the beginning of their training, participants completed evaluations after each of the three education sessions offered over the course of the police academy. Findings indicated that the recruits’ level of color-blind racial beliefs at the beginning of police academy was associated with lower cognitive engagement in the education sessions. Limitations of the findings are discussed as well as the implications for future evaluation and racism education programming efforts.
... Police, as a group, tend to more strongly endorse color-blind racial beliefs than do laypeople, and police recruits and experienced officers do not differ in their levels of endorsement (Hughes et al., 2016). Strong endorsement of color-blind attitudes may not necessarily be a function of the police environment, but those with higher endorsement of color-blind beliefs may be drawn to police work (Bornstein, Charles, Domingo, & Solis, 2012;Schlosser, 2013). Within this context, Hughes et al. (2016) underscored prior findings that motivations for pursuing a career in law enforcement often involve themes of "belief in a just world," or the idea that the world is "fair" and, thus, just actions are rewarded and unjust actions are punished. ...
... Police departments in the US, as entities that have begun to make great strides toward understanding racial and ethnic disparities and using empirical research to inform their policies and practices (Bullock & Tilley, 2009;Sherman, 2013Sherman, , 2015, may benefit from incorporating elements of education around color-blind racial ideologies into the multicultural training of their officers (Bornstein et al., 2012). ...
The beliefs of police, as the point of first contact with the justice system, may help to explain disproportionate minority contact between police and young people. Color‐blind racial beliefs, a form of implicit racism in which racial differences are denied, are more strongly endorsed by police than by laypeople. Using a 2 (youth race) × 3 (offense severity) experimental design, 339 officers participated in an online study examining the influence of youth race, offense severity, and officers' color‐blind racial beliefs on officers' reported likelihood of interacting with young people. Officers with lower levels of color‐blind beliefs reported they would be less likely to interact with Black youth. Additionally, attrition analyses indicated that officers assigned to the Black youth condition were more likely to drop out when asked to complete the measure of color‐blind beliefs. Policy and practice implications are discussed, with a focus on promoting greater discussion of color‐blind ideologies in multicultural trainings for police officers and increasing frank discussions about race and racial issues.
... Traditional cultural diversity training has minimal impact on CoBRAS scores (Schlosser 2013). However, in a modified diversity training curriculum focusing on implicit race bias and critical race theory, police CoBRAS scores were reduced; still, racial differences in scores remained-white officers' scores remained significantly higher than their black and Latino colleagues (Bornstein et al. 2012). ...
... Recently, researchers have recognized the need for mitigating color-blind racial beliefs among police (Bornstein et al. 2012;Schlosser 2013). But, expanding the focus beyond color-blind racial beliefs to whether changes in these beliefs subsequently modify behavioral outcomes, (e.g., reduced extralegal violence targeted at racial and ethnic minorities) needs further study. ...
Racial disparities in the US criminal justice system (CJS) have been extensively documented in scholarly work. Critical race scholars have suggested that color-blind racial attitudes inform the set of beliefs that CJS practitioners use in decision making. If this is the case, factors that are related to color-blind racial attitude trends in CJS practitioners must be better understood. We focus on a single CJS practitioner—the police—to assess their color-blind racial beliefs and compare these to the broader US public. Using the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS), we identified sociodemographic variables associated with high CoBRAS scores in a multiracial lay sample (N = 1401; males and females, mean age = 33.4 years). Police (N = 112) and police recruits (N = 52) CoBRAS scores were compared to CoBRAS scores of lay participants with similar sociodemographics as the police and recruit samples, (respectively, N = 451; N = 291). Police scored significantly higher on the CoBRAS than laypersons even when controlling for sociodemographic variables. Police recruits also have higher CoBRAS scores than laypersons, again controlling for sociodemographic variables. These findings suggest that police work attracts people who endorse color-blind racial beliefs. These findings make understanding the relationship between color-blind racial beliefs and discriminatory behavior of CJS practitioners imperative.
... (Bornstein et al., 2012, p. 179) When compared to officers who had not participated in the course, officers in the CRT-based course were found to be more aware of White racial privilege, institutional discrimination, and blatant racism. Further, the course was found to be particularly impactful on White officers, such that they experienced the most dramatic change in awareness compared to their Black and Latino counterparts (Bornstein et al., 2012). Taken together, these findings suggest that CRT-based training may provide a fruitful avenue for departments looking to heighten the awareness of officers to issues of race and racism. ...
We review the present state of research on police training in the United States, highlighting gaps in the literature, and limitations of trainings in use by local policing agencies. We focus on training content relevant to the volatile situations that are at the center of controversy, we evaluate content areas that focus on successfully navigating real-time, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous interactions, and discuss training needs in these areas. We suggest that one common response to the issue of bias—implicit bias training—lacks evidence of efficacy. Accordingly, we recommend alternative training content to address bias and discrimination. Finally, we call attention to potential barriers, including the highly charged political environment and officer resistance, that could limit the effectiveness of new training programs.
... The handful of studies exploring this issue typically examine how police officers perform on the COBRA scale, an extensively validated scale tapping into beliefs about white privilege, institutional discrimination, and blatant racism. Results indicate that police (compared to laypeople) are more likely to endorse colorblind racial beliefs (Hughes et al., 2016), that diversity training has mixed effects on police COBRA scores (Bornstein et al., 2012), and that greater endorsement of colorblind racial beliefs increases the propensity for officers to interact with youth of color (April et al., 2019). Yet, these studies do not explore how rhetorical frames related to colorblind racism explain public attitudes about systemic racism in the criminal justice system, which is integral to understanding challenges to addressing racial injustice. ...
Extensive research has explored public confidence in the criminal justice system and opinions about punishment, but less research has explored attitudes about criminal justice errors, including error related to race and racism. Drawing on the theory of colorblind racism, the current study examines attitudes about whether systemic racism exists in the criminal justice system and, if so, how the issue can best be addressed. Specifically, we examine the rhetoric respondents use to describe the role of systemic racism in the criminal justice system, paying particular attention to the presence of colorblind rhetorical frames. Findings indicate that although a majority of respondents believe systemic racism exists, many respondents attribute the problem to specific individuals or policies rather than institutions and organizations. Moreover, those who believe systemic racism does not exist often rely on colorblind rhetorical frames that justify or minimize existing racial disparities in criminal justice outcomes. These findings suggest reasons for optimism regarding efforts to address racial injustice as well as some potential obstacles.
... This image presents the same message as the work of scholars who write about the dangers of colorblind thinking when it comes to interactions between communities of color and police officers/law enforcement (Crenshaw and Peller 1992;Patton 1992). They demonstrate that in some communities, enforcement officers represent a threat rather than a source of safety (Bornstein et al. 2012). Last, Alex's drawing illustrates how authorities exercise legal violence in immigrant communities through experimental policies, such as in Arizona with the 287(g) agreements, that rupture family cohesion. ...
Hostile and unpredictable immigration policies can have detrimental consequences for children of immigrants. This study provides a snapshot of children’s reactions to anti-immigrant policies in Arizona from 2007 to 2010. Through a visual content narrative analysis of 115 drawings by children in a community-run after-school program in Maricopa County, Phoenix, Arizona, this study chronicles, analyzes, and attempts to understand the ways children make sense of their positions and their families’ security in US society. The themes that emerged from children’s drawings include (1) detention and deportation, (2) violence and racism, and (3) resilience. The themes outlined in this paper suggest that in a continued repressive political context, children’s preoccupations with family separation are likely to have lasting consequences as these children transition into adulthood. For scholars, educators, and policymakers, this study reveals the consequences of deportation-based fear on children’s academic, emotional, and physical well-being.
... Another strain of projects focuses on 'police' and 'community' -especially racial and ethnic minority communities -as mutually constitutive (rather than as pre-constituted elements or 'cultures' that only subsequently come into 'contact'). Two broad insights emerge from this latter collection of projects: first, that mutually constituting relations of police/ community are saturated with power, a fact powerfully illustrated through work on citizenship (De Genova 2002;Madsen 2004;Stewart 2011;Ticktin 2011) and race (Bornstein et al. 2012;Taylor 2013;Kerrigan 2015); second, the perhaps more politically vertiginous recognition that police constitute associations, in the positive sense, rather than serve as mere obstacle to it (J.X. Inda 2006;Feldman 2007;. ...
Despite its foundational ties with many of the disciplines traditionally associated with police studies—cognate disciplines such as comparative legal science, sociology, political science, and criminology—the discipline of anthropology has only recently seen the emergence of a topical subfield interested specifically in the ethnographic description and broader theorization of policing. This lacuna can be attributed to several factors intimately tied to the discipline’s core self-understanding, chief among them its historical role as a discipline whose raison d’être rests upon serving within the interdisciplinary ecumene as specialists in the study of non-Western, small-scale, pre-modern societies existing outside, or at most only in parallel to, state formations. Ancillary to this self-definition has been a professional ethical commitment to offering voice to and acting as the political champions of otherwise disenfranchised groups. After tracing the historically vexed relationship between the discipline of anthropology and the broader field of police studies, this chapter will survey the work of a growing cadre of scholars clearing space at the intersection of the two traditions of knowledge production. As such, it will outline the current and potential contributions and challenges of the young field of the “anthropology of police”.
We used a practical–participatory evaluation method to develop and critically evaluate a racial literacy education program for police recruits. The 10-h Racial Literacy Project (RLP) education was developed over the course of a year and across two training cohorts. The programming was informed by the literature and using the input of a core academic team, veteran police officers, and community members. A quasi-experimental design was used to assess the influence of the RLP intervention on a third cohort. Recruits participated in either the RLP intervention ( n = 34) or a Nonracial Diversity intervention ( n = 37). Participants’ pre- and posttest scores were compared on racial colorblind beliefs (or denial and minimization of racism) and ethnocultural empathic feelings. There were no significant differences on posttest racial colorblindness scores across the two intervention groups. Also, surprisingly, recruits in the RLP intervention group displayed statistically significant lower levels of empathetic feeling towards People of Color at posttest compared to their Nonracial Diversity intervention group counterparts. These findings suggest that 10 h of exposure to racial literacy education is insufficient to produce targeted desired changes. Several recommendations for future development of the RLP are included.
This chapter provides an overview of how critical race theory (CRT) has provided an important context for the racial disparities in the criminal justice system. CRT has promoted teaching the history of the criminal justice system in the United States of America (USA) and abroad from a racial perceptive. CRT scholars emphasize race because of how race and racism have shaped and impacted our society and institutions. CRT has been used to understand issues from police violence, sentencing disparities, school-to-prison pipeline, prison abolitionism, and much more. The CRT framework is especially important when it comes to understanding the disparities and history of the American criminal justice and legal system which was based on racist beliefs, institutions, and laws.
Although non-White victims experience many crimes, they are often a hidden population in various contexts. Extensive research has been devoted to exploring how racial dynamics impact offenders' experiences in the criminal justice system. However, less is known about the impact racial dynamics may have on victims and victimization. This chapter aims to discuss how studies of victims and victimization would benefit from further incorporating critical race theory. Specifically, this chapter will describe the trends in scholarship that discuss race, ethnicity, and victimization, discuss the impact of racial dynamics on victimhood among non-Whites, and describe how race, ethnicity, and victimization are represented in news and media. Additionally, avenues and suggestions for future research will be discussed.
This article examines the opening linguistic interactions between police officers and First Amendment auditors. First Amendment auditing is a relatively new movement in which individuals visit government-funded entities, such as a police department, and then videotape the encounter with the public officials. The vast majority of these auditors are individuals working independently, or citizen journalists. Examples of officers approaching auditors are examined to argue both parties deploy structured responses during these encounters. Police officers initiate conversations with auditors by deploying three various language structures: inquisitive linguistic strategies (asking questions), directive linguistic strategies, (giving commands), or a greeting. Despite the variety of linguistic structures, however, the argument is all three openings spoken by the police officers function as commands. The study also examines how First Amendment auditors linguistically respond to the commands of officers with refusals.
Guided by the following questions: (1) What are the experiences of immigrant children attending schools in communities experiencing police brutality and anti-immigrant sentiments? (2) How do middle school children of immigrants visually represent their experiences with legal violence? and (3) What are children’s visions of freedom and community safety in this context?, this article highlights the understudied preadolescent children of immigrants through a 2-year study of a multidisciplinary theater class at a local elementary school in South Central Los Angeles. Data includes child interviews, class observations, artwork, and performance videos, from recently arrived Mexican and Central American children aged 10 to 13 years. Findings reveal how children come to understand policing, reinforcing concepts like “good cop/bad cop,” conflating local police and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents, but also imagining alternatives for community safety outside of police systems. This work contributes to the fields of immigration, abolitionist education, and ethnic studies, among others, offering new ways of supporting immigrant children through the use of arts-based tools.
We investigated how ethnocultural empathy and colorblind racial beliefs were associated through the racial composition of close friendship groups in police recruits. In a sample of White police recruits in a midwestern training academy ( N = 192), mediation analyses revealed a significant association between ethnocultural empathy and colorblind racial beliefs through Black friendships. Specifically, findings from path analyses indicated an indirect effect between earlier empathy for Black, Indigenous, People of Color and later reduced denial of institutional racism. Although both ethnocultural empathy and racial beliefs were associated with Asian American and Latinx friends, these close cross-racial friendships were not significant mediators. Limitations, directions for future research, and implications for training and intervention in police samples are discussed.
Treatments of race and police violence in the fields of public administration and policy have drawn eclectically from many disciplinary sources in historical, political, and managerial analysis. From an institutional perspective, emphasis has been on how organizational practices, rules, norms, and values, along with role socialization, shape germane behavior. Of particular interest to the authors is the phenomenon of race-related police violence in its systemic but also attitudinal and behavioral manifestations in the policing role. How does an academic or practitioner researcher specify evaluative perspectives applicable to this policy and administrative challenge? There is a prior need for defined analytical and ethical positions drawing closely from public administration and policy sources. This article suggests ways to develop such grounded frameworks, built on these distinctive traditions but also going beyond them, so as to allow for an integrative approach to evaluative analysis and action on this grave and contentious issue.
Institutional racism is a concept that has gotten into a muddle. Ubiquitous in policing in the UK, but relegated to the margins of discussion in the US, this important and useful idea has been misunderstood on both sides of the Atlantic as a pervasive form of unconscious or cultural bias. This article argues that a clearer distinction is needed between cognitive bias and institutional racism especially with regard to the racial disparities in the enforcement outcomes in New York City. The numbers-driven management system, often called Compstat, paired with zero-tolerance enforcement of violations and misdemeanors, facilitates a pattern of institutional racism in which police motivation need not be bias, but, if anything, careerist: “activity” in the form of stop-question-and-frisk reports, summonses, and arrests in higher crime neighborhoods is the measure of “productivity” for officers and supervisors. Ultimately, this article argues that clarification of institutional racism is an important step bureaucratically and politically toward the positive reform of policing. The clarification of this distinction is also important in other fields.
The current controversy surrounding racial profi ling in America has focused renewed attention on the larger issue of racial bias by the police. Yet little is known about the extent of police racial bias and even less about public perceptions of the problem. This article analyzes recent national survey data on citizens' views of, and reported personal experiences with, several forms of police bias—including differential treatment of individuals and neighborhoods, police prejudice, and racial profi ling. We fi nd that attitudes toward the prevalence and acceptability of these practices are largely shaped by citizens' race, personal experiences with police discrimination, and exposure to news media reporting on incidents of police misconduct. The fi ndings lend support to the group-position theory of race relations. Racial bias by the police includes such things as racial profi ling of motorists, racial prejudice among police offi cers, and discriminatory treatment of minority individuals and minority neighborhoods. Little research exists on public perceptions of racially biased policing, though such perceptions may have important consequences. The perception of police practices as unfair or as racially motivated may lead to more frequent and severe confrontations between police and citizens and to greater distrust of the police. This article examines citizens' views of and reported experiences with police bias and the major determinants of citizens' perceptions.
A limited amount of research has examined the relationship between characteristics of police organizations and policing styles. In particular, few studies have examined the link between organizational structures and police officer arrest decisions. Wilson’s (1968) pioneering case study of police organizations suggested that individual police behavior is a function of departmental goals that occur within the broader political climate of a community. Wilson suggested that agencies could be classified into three typologies: the watchman style, the legalistic style, and the service style. The present study examines the influence of organizational characteristics associated with these styles on individual officers’ arrest rates using nationally representative data from large police agencies. Findings suggest that police officer arrest decisions are partially explained by variations in police organizational structures. The implications of these findings for contemporary organizational explanations of police behavior are discussed.
Previous research has shown that Blacks are more likely than Whites to hold unfavorable opinions of criminal justice agencies in America, but the literature has rarely examined whether social class also affects these opinions. Using recent national survey data on perceptions of racial discrimination by the police and the criminal justice system, this study examines the effects of race and class on citizen attitudes. The findings indicate that (1) race is a strong predictor of attitudes and (2) class affects several of these views. An important finding is that middle-class Blacks are sometimes more critical of the police and justice system than are lower-class Blacks.
This article examines the stories people from various racial groups tell about race and racism. It draws upon data from 106 transcribed interviews about race/racism with college educated adults who work in education and human service fields. The interview questions did not directly ask for stories, but respondents frequently told stories to illustrate or emphasize a point. This article focuses on those stories. The article begins with a discussion of the function of stories in culture and the way that historical and social positionality shape the stories we tell. Concepts from discourse analysis and critical race theory inform the analysis of the story data. Scott's (1990) theory of hidden and public transcripts offers a framework for differentiating stories that support mainstream views of and assumptions about race and racism from those counter-narratives which challenge the mainstream discourse. The article then provides a thematic presentation of counter-narrative stories, told predominantly by respondents of color, followed by examination of the hegemonic narratives told predominantly by whites. In particular, this section analyzes the prevalence and effects of color-blind ideology in white stories. Finally, the article discusses the value and importance of listening to the stories people tell as a way of understanding the reproduction of racism and the possibilities for intervention through using story in anti-racist teaching.
My project explored whether or not my approach to teaching an interracial communication course was effective in reducing racial prejudice and promoting racial sensitivity and awareness among undergraduate students. Analysis of student narratives and focus groups reveals that my approach was effective in impacting student perceptions of, and attitudes towards, race. Cognition, affect, and behavior were found to influence a student's ability to understand and transfer classroom knowledge to real-world human interactions. Most students adopted ways of thinking and behaviors that combat racism on an interpersonal level. My own teaching was enhanced by hearing and watching these changes take place.
One of the most controversial issues in policing concerns allegations of racial bias. This article examines citizens' perceptions of racialized policing in three neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., that vary by racial composition and class position: a middle-class white community, a middle-class black community, and a lower-class black community. In-depth interviews examined residents' perceptions of differential police treatment of individual blacks and whites in Washington and disparate police practices in black and white neighborhoods. Findings indicate, first, that there is substantial agreement across the communities in the belief that police treat blacks and whites differerently; and secondly, there is racial variation in respondents' explanations for racial disparities. On the question of residents' assessments of police relations with their own community relative to other-race communities, a neighborhood difference is found, with the black middle-class neighborhood standing apart from the other two neighborhoods.
Using data collected from 5,477 eighth grade students in eleven U.S. cities, this article explores the attitudes of juveniles toward police through five specific questions: (1) Do juveniles hold positive attitudes toward police, similar to those reported for adults?; (2) Are there differences in attitudes toward police across different racial and ethnic groups?; (3) Do attitudes toward police vary by gender?; (4) Does the city in which a juvenile resides affect his or her attitudes toward police?; and (5) Does the city where the juvenile resides interact with the race or ethnicity of the juvenile to produce a difference in attitudes toward police? Descriptive analyses suggest that unlike the favorable attitudes reported by adults, juveniles are relatively indifferent in their perceptions of police. Significant differences by race/ethnicity, gender, and city of residence were also found. The article concludes with a discussion of factors that may explain these differences and policy implications of the findings.
The study examines the dilemmas communicated by White students as they addressed issues of whiteness raised in an undergraduate interracial communication course. Data included semester-long in-class observation, three focus groups of White students from the class, and student documents. Communication patterns associated with dealing with White privilege, defining an antiracist lifestyle, and becoming comfortable with communicating about race were identified. Reasons for and response to white student silence in diversity-related courses are discussed.
What is Critical Race Theory (CRT) and what does it offer educational researchers and practitioners outside the US? This paper addresses these questions by examining the recent history of anti-racist research and policy in the UK. In particular, the paper argues that conventional forms of anti-racism have proven unable to keep pace with the development of increasingly racist and exclusionary education polices that operate beneath a veneer of professed tolerance and diversity. In particular, contemporary anti-racism lacks clear statements of principle and theory that risk reinventing the wheel with each new study; it is increasingly reduced to a meaningless slogan; and it risks appropriation within a reformist “can do” perspective dominated by the de-politicized and managerialist language of school effectiveness and improvement. In contrast, CRT offers a genuinely radical and coherent set of approaches that could revitalize critical research in education across a range of inquiries, not only in self-consciously “multicultural” studies. The paper reviews the developing terrain of CRT in education, identifying its key defining elements and the conceptual tools that characterize the work. CRT in education is a fast-changing and incomplete project but it can no longer be ignored by the academy beyond North America.
This study examined whether indicators of compromised police legitimacy explained variations in violent crime within New York City police precincts from 1975 to 1996. Integrating models of urban cultural attenuation and procedural justice, the study hypothesized that variations in patterns of police misconduct and over/under policing (the indicators of police legitimacy) would predict variations in violent crime rates of communities characterized by concentrated structural disadvantage. Using a panel design and controlling for the relevant ecology of crime factors and spatial autocorrelation, the study found that in communities characterized by high disadvantage, incidents of police misconduct predicted variations in violent crime; in communities characterized by extreme disadvantage, both indicators of compromised police legitimacy (misconduct and over policing) predicted variations in violent crime. The study found no significant relationships between the indicators of police legitimacy and violent crime in communities of low disadvantage. Findings support emerging arguments that emphasize the importance of formal institutions of social control in the most structurally disadvantaged communities (that is, those often subjected to cultural attention) and suggest implications for the ecology of crime model and police accountability.
Legitimacy is a psychological property of an authority, institution, or social arrangement that leads those connected to it to believe that it is appropriate, proper, and just. Because of legitimacy, people feel that they ought to defer to decisions and rules, following them voluntarily out of obligation rather than out of fear of punishment or anticipation of reward. Being legitimate is important to the success of authorities, institutions, and institutional arrangements since it is difficult to exert influence over others based solely upon the possession and use of power. Being able to gain voluntary acquiescence from most people, most of the time, due to their sense of obligation increases effectiveness during periods of scarcity, crisis, and conflict. The concept of legitimacy has a long history within social thought and social psychology, and it has emerged as increasingly important within recent research on the dynamics of political, legal, and social systems.
Diversity is one of the most significant forces influencing organizational change in the 1990s. The number of diversity workshops, videos, journal articles, boardgames, handbooks and CD-ROMs testify to its significance. Many of these present diversity as a problem to overcome or manage. Few recognize diversity as a potential source of organizational effectiveness. This article presents diversity as a key resource to create a high performing work culture that enables all members of the organization to do their best work I share some of the lessons learned in over twenty-five years experience consulting with public and private organizations in their quest to build inclusive, high performing work environments. The article distinguishes between diversity and inclusion, describes a model for diagnosing an organization's culture, sets forth steps for implementing organizational change, and discusses the human resource professional's role. These concepts grew out of my work with organizations such as Mobil Corporation, Dun & Bradstreet, Apple Computer and the Cities of Portland, Maine; Columbus, Indiana; and San Diego, California.
"The Truly Disadvantagedshould spur critical thinking in many quarters about the causes and possible remedies for inner city poverty. As policy makers grapple with the problems of an enlarged underclass they—as well as community leaders and all concerned Americans of all races—would be advised to examine Mr. Wilson's incisive analysis."—Robert Greenstein,New York Times Book Review "'Must reading' for civil-rights leaders, leaders of advocacy organizations for the poor, and for elected officials in our major urban centers."—Bernard C. Watson,Journal of Negro Education "Required reading for anyone, presidential candidate or private citizen, who really wants to address the growing plight of the black urban underclass."—David J. Garrow,Washington Post Book World Selected by the editors of theNew York Times Book Reviewas one of the sixteen best books of 1987. Winner of the 1988 C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
This research on criminal justice programs and curricula in 1999–2000 is a follow-up to Southerland's study of baccalaureate programs in 1988–89, published in the Spring 1991 issue of the Journal of Criminal Justice Education . A national overview and regional differences are presented. Positive and negative changes are highlighted, and recommendations for improvement are included. The findings are evaluated in light of the ACJS Minimum Standards for Criminal Justice Education and the broader context of general trends in higher education.
New perspectives on the impact of college on students, on linking general education, the major, electives and extra-classroom experiences toward the goal of “integrated learning,” and renewed emphasis on the importance of producing liberally educated college graduates, present opportunities for criminal justice educators to make their field a keystone in the architecture of a liberal education. In this essay, I argue that the multidisciplinary perspectives that characterize the field of criminal justice, as well as its core intellectual concerns, make criminal justice well-suited to serve as the infrastructure for a high-quality undergraduate liberal education program.
This study analyzes critical pedagogy in an effort to create an approach to justice education that can lead to the formation of a critical consciousness. Associative Group Analysis (AGA) is utilized to measure students' subjective perceptions of justice concepts through free association, finding that dualistic views of justice are replaced by multi-dimensional images as a result of engaging in the process of dialogue and contradiction. These objectives produce a discourse of justice that contributes to the potential for the empowerment of justice studies students to effect liberatory social change.
The 1970s marks one of the most significant decades in the evolution of crime-related higher education in America. The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) and its Office of Criminal Justice Education and Training (OCJET) played an integral and important part in the development of the field during that period. The story of OCJET, however, is not well known or documented in the literature. This article concerns the influence that OCJET had in addressing important issues of quality and relevance as the field of crime-related studies found its place in academia.
Quality education in the United States has been compromised via public discourses that reinstitute racism on a daily basis. In its current manifestation, racism survives through the guise of neoliberalism, a kind of repartee that imagines human agency as simply a matter of individualized choices, the only obstacle to effective citizenship and agency being the lack of principled self-help and moral responsibility. In this article, I examine briefly the changing nature of the new racism by analyzing how some of its central assumptions evade notions of race, racial justice, equity, and democracy altogether. My analysis focuses especially on the discourse of color blindness and neoliberal racism. I then address how the racism of denial and neoliberal racism were recently on prominent display in the controversies surrounding former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's praise for segregationist Strom Thurmond. The essay concludes by offering some suggestions about how the new racism, particularly its neoliberal version, can be addressed as both a pedagogical and a political issue.
Public trust and confidence in the police is generally low, with minority group members especially mistrustful of the police. This study uses a sample of New Yorkers to examine, first, whether trust is related to public willingness to cooperate with the police. The results suggest that it is. Second, this study examines the relationship of police policies and practices to trust in the police. The study finds that trust is most strongly influenced by public judgments about the fairness of the procedures that the police follow when exercising their authority. These process-based judgments are more influential than are either assessments of the effectiveness of police crime-control activities or judgments about the fairness of the police distribution of services. These findings support the process-based model of regulation.
There has been a long-standing debate over whether a college education for police officers is desirable or even necessary. Today, with the ever-expanding complexity of the police role and the transition toward community policing, this question is more significant than ever. A zenith of interest and debate over the requirement of higher education for officers was reached in the 1970s, but it soon died out. However, a quickly changing social landscape, changing job role, rapid technological advancement, domestic terrorism and increased scrutiny have combined to renew the debate over higher education. This article attempts to synthesize past literature and bring the discussion up to date. Finally, the authors will advocate a position that would require a bachelor's degree for police officers over time, using a graduated timetable and supported by federal funding.
The prior literature has highlighted a variety of workplace problems, such as racial and gender bias and lack of influence over work activities, as influences on police stress. Additional explanations for police stress include community conditions, for example, high crime rates and size of the community, token status within the police organization, and lack of family and coworker support for work-related activities. In a large-sample, exploratory study, this research examined the workplace problems that were hypothesized to predict stress. It also determined whether community conditions, token status, and lack of social support explained additional variance in officers’ stress levels. Lack of influence over work activities and bias against one’s racial, gender, or ethnic group stood out as important predictors of stress after controls were introduced for demographic variables. Interventions to redesign jobs to afford greater influence and to reduce within-department bias are approaches that could reduce police officers’ stress.
Academic criminal justice is normatively organized, mirroring the normative focus of the public sector criminal justice apparatus. This normative focus carries into the classroom, where criminal issues are described in terms of liberal or conservative crime control values. This article argues that interpretive or hermeneutic approaches to education provide a counterbalance to the normative focus. Two classes are described, one undergraduate and one graduate, in which students are challenged to think interpretively about justice issues.
The textbooks generally available for adoption for introduction to criminal justice courses appear to be quite similar. Recently, many publishers have begun to offer cheaper and more concise editions of their main texts. The purpose of this research is to describe 16 textbooks that are likely to be used for introduction to criminal justice courses within three evaluative dimensions — depth/balance of scholarship, student reading/study aids, and teaching/pedagogical support. The analysis reveals more similarities among the textbooks than differences. Concise editions appear to have fewer citations, photographs and other visual enhancements.
The findings from this study show that students who were about to complete their undergraduate diversity requirement, compared to those who were just beginning it, exhibited significantly less prejudice and made more favorable judgments about Blacks. These opinions were shown to be significantly related to the chances that students would become acquainted or have serious discussions with students of another race or ethnic background. The educational value of diversity-related curricular initiatives are discussed.
In this article, the authors critically synthesize how Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an emerging field of inquiry has been used as a tool of critique and analysis in K-12 education research. The authors point out that CRT has been used as a framework for examining: persistent racial inequities in education, qualitative research methods, pedagogy and practice, the schooling experiences of marginalized students of color, and the efficacy of race-conscious education policy. The authors explore how these studies have changed the nature of education research and stress the need for further research that critically interrogates race and racism in education.
Using data collected from 5,477 eighth grade students in eleven U.S. cities, this article explores the attitudes of juveniles toward police through five specific questions: (1) Do juveniles hold positive attitudes toward police, similar to those reported for adults?; (2) Are there differences in attitudes toward police across different racial and ethnic groups?; (3) Do attitudes toward police vary by gender?; (4) Does the city in which a juvenile resides affect his or her attitudes toward police?; and (5) Does the city where the juvenile resides interact with the race or ethnicity of the juvenile to produce a difference in attitudes toward police? Descriptive analyses suggest that unlike the favorable attitudes reported by adults, juveniles are relatively indifferent in their perceptions of police. Significant differences by race/ethnicity, gender, and city of residence were also found. The article concludes with a discussion of factors that may explain these differences and policy implications of the findings.
University education for police officers continues to be heralded as a major component in the reform of police organizations and police culture. Interestingly, the extensive research literature from the United States over the past 30 years remains ambivalent about the extent to which education achieves these objectives. Individual officers doubtless gain personal and professional benefits, but the relationship between higher education and police effectiveness, professionalism and accountability remains unclear. Nevertheless, the Australian experience since the late 1980s is that concerted efforts to provide university programs for police almost invariably arise from periods of crisis in police organizations and the recommendations of official inquiries into those organizations. Two educational “reform” models have resulted, one based on liberal education and the other on a paradigm labeled “professional policing.” These now constitute the main (contrasting) paradigms for police education and training across different states. The case study concludes that the relationship between university education and preparation for policing is likely to remain problematic.