The Political Roots of Racial Tracking in American Criminal Justice

This book examines the role of the public and policy makers in enabling the race problem in the American criminal justice system.

Nina M. Moore (Author)

9781107022973, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 January 2015

406 pages, 68 b/w illus. 54 tables
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.6 cm, 0.68 kg

'Moore offers a broad indictment of racism in criminal justice, reaching beyond the biases of police, prosecutors, and criminal-court judges. She shows how a pervasive tendency to blame blacks for the problems they face encourages legislative and public indifference to reforming a system that channels African Americans toward harsher punishment than whites. This detailed account argues that we must challenge punitive public attitudes and legislative shortsightedness, as well as actors within the criminal-justice system, if we are ever to arrive at a more even-handed approach.' Doris Marie Provine, Professor Emerita, School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University

The race problem in the American criminal justice system persists because we enable it. The tendency of liberals to point a finger at law enforcement, racial conservatives, the War on Drugs, is misguided. Black as well as white voters, Democrat as much as Republican lawmakers, President Obama as much as Reagan, both Congress and the Supreme Court alike; all are implicated. We all are 'The Man'. Whether the problem is defined in terms of blacks' overrepresentation in prisons or in terms of the disproportional use of deadly police force against blacks, not enough of us demand that something be done. The Political Roots of Racial Tracking in American Criminal Justice is the story of how the race problem in criminal justice is continually enabled in the national crime policy process, and why.

1. Racial tracking: two law-enforcement modes
2. Policy process theory of racial tracking: an overview
3. A color-blind problem: the US Supreme Court and racial influences in law enforcement
4. Opportunities for change: the racial justice agenda in Congress
5. Congress as power player: racial justice versus 'law and order'
6. The politics principle and the party playbook
7. Public mind-set: what Americans believe about race, crime, and criminal justice disparities
8. Reasons to believe: options concerning race, crime, and justice.

Subject Areas: Constitution: government & the state [JPHC]