Abstract
Race and Crime: Geographies of Injustice (2018) by Elizabeth Brown and George Barganier firmly places the study of race, crime, and the criminal justice system in the context of colonialism. The authors delineate historical connections to modern policy that allows coloniality to continue to play a defining role in the inequality experienced by Black and Brown populations in the United States in the 21st century.
Rather than starting with crime, as most criminologists in the past have done, Brown and Barganier start with race, explaining how its construction is tied to oppression and how the definition of race was built into the legal, political, economic, and social structure of American society. The taken-for-granted common perceptions of the meaning of race is deconstructed and challenged in the first chapter of this text. This crucial definitional step is missing from most books on crime and opens the door to a greater theoretical understanding of colonialism and how historical practices continue to shape the opportunities available to all people along racial boundaries in the United States. The text further challenges critical theorists in criminology to more fully acknowledge the role of race in class relations.
Beginning with a definition of colonialism as the “occupation and domination of a foreign territory and people” (p. 34), the authors explain the underpinning of this process is rooted in a system of knowledge production that privileged the perspectives of colonists. Furthermore, geographical conquest was justified by knowledge production “premised on a racial understanding of the colonizer’s superiority” (p. 35). Historically, biased scientific observations and religious ethnocentrism, based on domain assumptions of racial superiority, were used to legitimize inhumane practices such as slavery, relocation, and genocide. These practices formed the foundation of the American and global economic systems, which allowed for the accumulation of wealth and power in White populations that continues to contribute to massive racial inequalities in our society.
Coloniality is the sublimation of colonialism into modern practices including the current operation of the criminal justice system. Brown and Barganier clearly map out how racism, which has been challenged and led to numerous reforms, is still operating at a structural level in political, economic, social, and legal institutions. They show through examples, like the White nationalist demonstrations in Charlottesville, VA, how the discourse of racial superiority is far from dead. The powerful historical examples utilized in this book include an exploration of how connections were made between the eugenics movement and criminology, social problems and immigration, and housing inequality and racial segregation. The shocking nature of this history is demonstrated by numerous quotes from original sources, quantitative and qualitative studies, photos, advertisements, and political cartoons. Brown and Barganier take what for many is an abstract discussion of racism and its compounding historical consequences and clearly ground it in specific laws, policies, and practices. They build an understanding of institutional racism through examples such as zoning restrictions that created racial segregation, loan practices that kept Blacks from purchasing homes, public housing that isolated the poor, and a war on drugs that disproportionately incarcerated minority users. Furthermore, these concrete examples show how many well-meaning practices that system reformers continue to attempt are derailed or fall short of their promises.
The book concludes with four chapters on the criminal justice system including the role that colonialism and coloniality play on policing, the court system, corrections, and the death penalty. By providing the historical context in previous chapters, modern debates about the role of race and the criminal justice system are moved from discussions of the individual to the structural role of the criminal justice system in perpetuating inequality. Practices such as racial profiling, all White juries, bail requirements, drug policy, surveillance, and mass incarceration are framed by coloniality. Geographies of Injustice once seen cannot be ignored, and there is an implied challenge in this book for readers to critically explore history, stereotypes, policies, practices, institutions, and laws that continue to perpetuate systemic inequality. Social problems in our society are too often addressed as crime problems, and an ever looming question in this book is why are “police placed on the front lines of social problems such as poverty and the structural effects of invidious racial discrimination and provided primarily the tools of force and violence…to effect change” (p. 248)? As Brown and Bargainer argue, this context shapes the relationship between the police and minority communities and between Black individuals and officers.
Admittedly, this book focuses on the systemic violence perpetuated against Black and Brown human beings by coloniality, with the criminal justice system playing a leading role, and with this focus, there are bound to be areas that receive less attention. Most notably, the place of trauma, specifically intergenerational trauma, and minority victimization by crime in constructing geographies of injustice is glossed over. By clearly explaining the connection between our past and present state, this book leaves us all with a moral imperative to address structural inequalities but few recommendations on where to start. I recommend Race and Crime: Geographies of Injustice as essential for all criminology, sociology, criminal justice, law students, and scholars who strive to understand the role of the criminal justice system in perpetuating racial inequality in our society.
