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Race, Crime, and the Law

NCJ Number
167030
Author(s)
R Kennedy
Date Published
1997
Length
547 pages
Annotation
This book explores the bitterly contested crossroads where race relations intersect with the rules that govern the apprehension, trial, and punishment of criminals.
Abstract
The author explains and evaluates solutions to important legal controversies that arise when legislative, administrative, and judicial policies and decisions are challenged on the grounds they are racially unjust. His goals are to show the existence of neglected common ground between combatants of competing ideological camps, to explain why a substantial number of Americans view the criminal justice system with suspicion and antagonism, to provide useful guidance in grappling with the issue of whether it is ever defensible to engage in racial discrimination, and to shed light on the difficult problem of uncovering racial discrimination when a policy makes no reference to race and when its authors deny having acted with a racial motive. Although the book speaks broadly to the regulation of race relations in the administration of criminal law, the racial conflict upon which it primarily focuses is the black-white confrontation. Specific chapters cover the failure of the criminal justice system to protect blacks from criminals, the debate over the wisdom and legality of using racial criteria in jury selection, legal system responses to accusations that appeals to racial prejudice render trials unfair, the idea that members of one race are sometimes statistically more likely to be involved in crime than members of another race, and allegations that blacks are victimized on a widespread basis by racially discriminatory prosecutions and punishments. References and notes

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