Abstract
The goal of Race, Ethnicity, Crime and Criminal Justice in the Americas is to understand how race and ethnicity shape criminal offending, victimization, and criminal justice response across nine countries in the Americas. The collection aims to document how race and ethnicity are conceptualized across these diverse societies, and how such concepts inform discourses on crime and criminal justice. This is an ambitious goal, and one that is only partially realized. A lack of available data poses limits on what many authors are able to report, while the breadth of the topic results in chapters that bring very different perspectives to bear on the general theme. Thus, while some chapters provide excellent overviews, they are ultimately disjointed and difficult to compare. Anita Kalunta-Crumpton’s edited collection will be most useful for readers with interests in a particular country rather than as an overview about the role of race and ethnicity in crime and criminal justice institutions in the Americas as a whole. Despite these limitations, the book does provide a worthwhile addition to the limited body of work addressing crime and criminal justice from a comparative, international perspective.
The collection would have been strengthened had the broad topic been distilled somewhat by a concise thesis or the identification of key themes. Regrettably, this is lacking. Rather, the book strives to address a topic so broad that the chapters often seem to have little in common with one another. The introduction also provides little guidance to the reader. Instead of tying the chapters together, it highlights the difficulty of studying race and ethnicity in a comparative perspective (given the diverse ways in which race and ethnicity are defined, understood, and translated into official data) and suggests that a focus on ethnicity may solve this problem. Unfortunately, after highlighting the crucial importance of the concept of ethnicity for the study, editor Kalunta-Crumpton then notes that virtually no chapter was able to address the topic due to data constraints. In recognition of this fact, it may have been unwise to present the topic of ethnicity as a rallying theme.
There are important themes that run across each of the chapters, themes that are identified in the book’s conclusion. The first is poverty and low socioeconomic status as important predictors of violence, victimization, offending, and (often) a conflictual relationship with the police. The second is that in many of the countries of study, the highest rate of violence is both perpetrated and born by members of black communities. However, because these black communities are frequently urban and poor, it is difficult to disentangle the independent role of race. Finally, the collection highlights the crucial importance of place, noting that violence and victimization (whether from within the community or perpetrated by the police) is frequently concentrated in poor urban communities. While these findings may not be surprising, they remain important to document. While some chapters provide compelling evidence, in others, claims seem out of proportion to the data they report.
The chapters differ widely in the quality of the data relied upon to make claims. In large part this is simply a consequence of the fact that many countries do not collect racial or ethnic statistics on criminal offending and victimization. Canada, for instance, has an official ban on the collection of race-crime statistics. Thus, while chapters on the United States and Trinidad and Tobago are able to present official statistics, the chapter on Canada relies upon self-reports and other surveys, while that on Columbia reports data on a single municipality. Other chapters discuss the concentration of violence in particular communities (the Brazilian favela), particular incidents of violence against individuals (Mexico), the role of race in a particular institution (Argentina), or provide a general discussion of ideology (Cuba). Thus, while some chapters provide evidence that can be compared easily across countries, others are less useful for this purpose.
The collection’s strength lies in the historical background each chapter provides. For instance, while many readers are aware of the concept of racial democracy in Brazilian society, fewer may be aware of the discourse present in Mexico represented by the slogan “todos somos mestizos” (we are all mestizo). This claim, that all Mexicans share a mix of Spanish and indigenous heritage, essentially leaves Afro-Mexicans out of the national discourse. Illuminating historical information, about the development of the concept of race and its intersections with class categories, is present in each of the chapters and provides an important foundational understanding of each country’s race relations and ideals.
Thus, while this book has important limitations, it also represents a significant first-step in addressing an important but under-researched topic. Many chapters provide an interesting overview of the diverse historical role played by race and racism in the countries of study, while some chapters provide solid empirical evidence about race differences in criminal offending, victimization, and justice processing. A more uniform approach to a narrower topic, and chapters united by a stronger thesis would strengthen the collection, as would the availability of better data. Despite these limitations, the collection provides a useful guide for those interested in the research, data, and history of race, crime and criminal justice in the nine countries touched upon.