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Race, Crime, and Culture

NCJ Number
94203
Journal
Crime and Social Justice Issue: 20 Pages: Complete issue
Editor(s)
T Platt
Date Published
Unknown
Length
182 pages
Annotation
Twelve articles address the respective roles of race, class, ideology, and culture in the incidence of crime and the operation of American and British criminal justice systems. They specifically focus on theory and research, social justice and social policy, pedagogy, State and right wing repression, and struggles for justice.
Abstract
One article argues that racism-- an ideology that exists throughout the capitalist world-economy in order to justify the payment of subsistence wages--is constitutive of the capitalist world economy. An examination of the rise of the Right notes that selective use of repression in the United States has been a constant, with minorities, women, and oppositional groups of all kinds the primary targets. Several articles address the overt repression of the underclass in Great Britain, while one discussion makes a broadside attack on the conventional notion that so-called 'black on black' crime represents the greatest threat to the physical survival and well-being of the black community in America. An article on the anti-Semitism and criminal actions and policies of the Argentine military and ruling elite raises the need for criminologists to expand the definition of crime beyond traditional concerns. Transnational corporations which dominate the world economy are the subject of several papers, with special attention devoted to how the ruling class rules, the Extradition Act of 1983, and the massive violations of due process in the case of a Native American who organized against corporate exploitation of the sacred Black Hills in South Dakota. The success of the Right in implementing its crime policies and the ideological closure which characterized the process by which recommendations of the 1981 Attorney General's Task Force on Violent Crime were reached are also highlighted. Notes and references are provided. For individual articles, see NCJ 94204-07.