Tokenism in Criminology and Criminal Justice Departments: Problems and Solutions

Early Experiences

I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. For most of my childhood, my family and I lived two blocks away from one of Seattle’s sprawling public housing complexes. We had everything we needed but I knew that if my parents missed working even for a short time we could easily be forced to move into public housing. My mother attended community college but did not earn a degree, and my stepfather never attended college. My initial interest in studying crime and justice was sparked by growing up in my working-class neighborhood during the crack cocaine era. Prior to the introduction of crack, the violence and disorder in my neighborhood were predictable and easy to avoid (e.g., stay away from the blocks containing taverns, be home by nightfall especially on Fridays and Saturdays). Once crack hit the streets, crime became unpredictable, kids with guns formed gangs (often to facilitate drug sales), and crack addicts as well as the mayhem they brought with them were rampant. At the risk of under-statement, my neighborhood during the crack epidemic was wild and it seemed that anything could happen at any given moment.

To make matters worse, the police began to patrol my neighborhood in a more aggressive, proactive manner in an effort to control the rising crime, disorder, and violence. I was stopped infrequently, perhaps due to my youthful appearance and diminutive size, but my friends and family endured frequent, often negative, police encounters. These police efforts appeared to me to be ineffective at combating crime but highly effective in alienating large swaths of the community. I felt there had to be more effective ways to fight drugs, crime, and violence without damaging the already tenuous relationship between police and the largely minority communities in which I resided.

Seattle even in this era was relatively progressive on race issues. The city’s public schools were integrated by a bussing program, which resulted in about half of my classmates being White and other half people of color. I believe the bussing program was nearly universally hated by the kids affected but it did teach us how to interact and develop friendships with people of different races—skills that have proven valuable later in life. Nevertheless, racism was pervasive, particularly when traveling outside of Seattle’s minority neighborhoods. In fact, my stepfather and I were once shot at by a small group of White men while fishing one night in Carnation, a rural area about 30 minutes to the east of Seattle, simply for being Black. Thus, crime, drug problems, contact with the criminal justice system, and racism—the things that I study today—are not abstract notions for me. I have direct personal experience with these issues.

The University of Washington, Black Professors, and Wanting to Become One

My interest in studying crime and justice was solidified while a student at the University of Washington (UW). There I was introduced to the systematic study of crime and justice when I enrolled in a course on deviance taught by George S. Bridges. Dr. Bridges was a masterful instructor. He was knowledgeable, smart, and funny. I liked this course so much that I changed my major to sociology. This course also introduced me to Charis Kubrin, who was one of Dr. Bridges’ teaching assistants. After taking the deviance course, I knew I wanted to study crime and justice but I never thought about being a professor. My thinking changed when I took another deviance course taught Robert D. Crutchfield, who was the first Black professor I had encountered as a student. Dr. Crutchfield was one of the best professors I ever had, and by far the most influential. He was (and still is) a great scholar, generous with his time, jovial and remarkably humble despite his tremendous gifts. And clearly Dr. Crutchfield loved his job as a professor. After taking his course, I realized that I too could become a professor. In short, I wanted to follow in the steps left by Crutchfield and to be just like him as a professor. I also had three other Black professors at UW. Dr. Julius Debro was another influential figure, who taught a course with Charis Kubrin as his lead teaching assistant, and later became a mentor to me. Dr. Darlene Conley was another Black instructor who taught classes in UW’s Sociology Department. For the capstone assignment in her course, she set me up to interview a Black U.S. Probation Officer, Leroy Washington, to gather information for a paper I was writing about the infamous 100-to-1 federal mandatory minimums for cocaine distribution. (This contact with the U.S. Probation Office led to an internship and eventually to my first post-college job as a U.S. Probation Officer Assistant.) And last but certainly not least, Dr. Albert W. Black, Jr. was yet another Black lecturer in the Department of Sociology from whom I took a course. Altogether, at UW, I took courses with four Black scholars who inspired me to pursue a career as a professor.

The only problem was I had no idea how to become a professor. I did not know the first thing about graduate school, how to apply to graduate school, which universities had CCJ departments, or how to afford attending graduate school. Fortunately, I ran into Charis Kubrin at a Gold’s Gym during my senior year at UW. I told her that I wanted to become a professor and needed to know about graduate school. She generously answered all of my questions and gave me her perspective about graduate school form a graduate student’s perspective. I also received advice about graduate school from Drs. Crutchfield and Debro. These Black professors not only inspired me to be like them, but they also put me on the path toward achieving my goal. Without these Black scholars and their influence on me, I am certain that I would not have become a professor.

University of Maryland and the Lack of Black Professors

When I joined the University of Maryland’s (UMD) Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice as a graduate student, I realized how lucky I was to have four Black scholars as an undergraduate. There were two Black professors in the Department, Drs. Katheryn Russell-Brown and Sandra Bass, but both left UMD while I was a student in the program. Sadly, I never had an opportunity to take a course with either of them. While I received an outstanding education at UMD, I never took classes taught by Black faculty or even a person of color. In fact, I do not believe that the UMD’s internationally renowned Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice Department has hired a single Black professor since the departure of Dr. Russell-Brown in approximately 2003. That was almost 20 years ago!

What makes the absence of Black faculty at UMD’s CCJ department particularly astonishing is the fact that UMD is located in Prince George’s county and just outside of Washington, DC. Prince George’s county is one of the most affluent Black majority counties in the United States. Further, Washington, DC is one of the meccas of Black America and it is home to one of America’s most prominent HBCUs, Howard University. Howard University is teeming with world-class Black scholars. Which leads to the question, how is it possible that Howard University can attract world-class Black scholars but UMD’s top ranked CCJ department cannot? The only conceivable answer to this question is that UMD’s CCJ department has not dedicated itself toward doing so. (Yes, UMD as a proud alumnus, I’m publicly calling you out to do better on this front.)

Tokenism in CCJ Departments

Unfortunately, UMD’s CCJ department is not alone—several notable Ph.D. granting CCJ departments do not currently (October 2020) have a single Black tenured or tenure-track professor. These institutions include John Jay, Penn State (Sociology and Criminology), Washington State University, University of South Florida, and University of Texas at Dallas. In fact, of the 41 Ph.D. granting CCJ departments studied by Greene and colleagues (2018), 16 or 39% did not have a single Black professor.

According to the same study, another 13 or 32% of CCJ departments had only one Black professor. Thus, the overwhelming majority of CCJ departments (70%) have little or no Black presence as tenured or tenure-track professors. This dearth of Black scholars is notable given the overrepresentation of African Americans under the auspices of the criminal justice system, but it is particularly striking in this moment of racial unrest with criminal justice reform aimed at achieving racial fairness as the central political issue.

My own career mirrors the findings of Greene and colleagues. For the vast majority of my career, I have been the only Black professor in my department. Of the 18 years I have been a professor, only in three of these years have I worked with another Black professor.

The Problems of Tokenism

The token underrepresentation of Black scholars in CCJ department is deeply problematic in a number of ways. For one, it deprives students of learning from Black scholars. This deprivation is highly salient because Black scholars almost universally have both scholarly understandings of and first-hand experiences with many of the forces that drive crime (such as high poverty/crime areas and the cultural dynamics associated with such areas), and they often know people involved in crime as well as crime victims. These experiences provide Black scholars with insights and perspectives that mainstream, White criminologists may not have. Which leads to a second problem: the dearth of Black scholars causes criminal justice research to largely lack the insights and voices of Blacks—the racial/ethnic group most overrepresented in and affected by the criminal justice system.

Another obvious problem of tokenism is it denies Black students the opportunity to be taught and inspired by Black faculty members. Such experiences could potentially lead to more Black students attending graduate school, which opens many professional doors including becoming future Black professors. Again, I am certain that I would not have become a professor if not for the influence of Drs. Crutchfield and Debro as well as Drs. Black and Conley who were lecturers.

Moreover, in stark contrast to the dearth of Black scholars in CCJ departments, Black CCJ majors are common, which leads to Black professors being vastly outnumbered by Black students (and minority students generally). From my personal experience as a professor, Black and minority students in need of assistance (e.g., problems with faculty in the department, mentoring, career advice) are much more likely to seek out Black and minority professors when they are available. These interactions are crucial for student success. Yet, giving students the time and attention they fully deserve reduces the amount of time available for Black professors to pursue their research agendas.

Beyond time devoted to students, Black scholars often spend more time performing service of various types due in large part to the dearth of Black academics. To the field’s credit, there generally is a concerted effort to include scholars of color in all major endeavors. Yet, the small number of Blacks in the field, particularly tenured professors, causes Black scholars to be continually asked to engage in service activities of various sorts. For example, I am an associate editor for two journals (Journal of Quantitative Criminology and Criminology and Public Policy) and I am on at least five editorial boards of publications in the field. I also frequently review for academic journals and federal grant proposals. Not including the manuscripts I manage as an associate editor, I have reviewed 45 manuscripts in the first 10 months of 2020. Moreover, I am on the executive boards of ASC and the ASC’s Division of Sentencing and Corrections. And I long ago lost count of how many employment search committees I have served on.

This level of service is necessary to make sure that Black voices are included in the field of criminology and criminal justice. To see the importance of this inclusion, consider this: I once served on an employment search committee for another department in the same college. This department was large but had zero Black faculty, despite their research activities focusing on populations in which African Americans are overrepresented. Two extremely talented young Black scholars were interviewed but the plan was to hire only one of them. Then I spoke up and said it was a golden opportunity to hire two Black faculty members that would be foolish to squander. It was only later I found out that because of my comment and some shuffling of resources by the dean, both of interviewees were hired. These two Black faculty members are still employed by this department and both have earned tenure at the university. The point of this recollection is that Black voices matter. Being included on this search committee gave me an opportunity to shape and improve its outcome. Yet, of course, time being zero sum means that these service activities reduce my opportunities to conduct research.

One of tokenism’s most difficult harms to measure is the isolation and negative mental consequences that many Black scholars suffer. The various forms of discrimination that Black scholars face, myself included, cause stress and negatively affect our mental health. Black scholars, myself included, continually have to deal with their work being denigrated by their White colleagues. My favorite example of this is phenomenon involves a White female colleague who openly opposed my addition to a department that had no Black faculty because she judged my scholarly record as weak. Remarkably, less than a year later, this same White faculty member was put in charge of diversity and inclusion for the college. Further, the mental health of Black scholars, myself included, is negatively affected by White colleagues’ mistreatment of Black students and the burden of being forced to intervene when it occurs. Because of their singularity, Black academics bear these burdens often in isolation from their White colleagues, who cannot fully understand the challenges they face. This isolation often extends to family and friends due to their unfamiliarity with the demands of working in academia. Thus, it should not be a surprise to anyone that Black faculty report lower levels of job satisfaction and are more likely to report intentions to change institutions than their White counterparts (Laden & Hagedorn, 2000).

Most essentially, tokenism results in CCJ departments lacking the critical mass of Black scholars necessary to change the atmospheres in which they work and reach their full potential as scholars. A critical mass of Black scholars alleviates the isolation forced upon Black professors. A critical mass of Black scholars emboldens Black faculty members to air their grievances of various types including the racial slights that Black scholars frequently endure. A critical mass of Black scholars creates the opportunity to divvy up the service obligations placed on Black scholars. But perhaps most importantly, a critical mass of African American faculty increases these professors’ opportunities to conduct their research, fulfill their research agendas, and reach their full potentials. Simply stated, one Black faculty member in a department is not enough.

Causes of Tokenism and How to Increase Black Faculty in CCJ Programs

Unfortunately, many CCJ departments believe that one Black scholar is sufficient. In my experience, the presence of a single Black professor reduces the urgency and motivation for CCJ departments to further increase their diversity. Stated differently, employment search committees have a completely different tenor when a department has no Black faculty compared to when a department has at least one. Discussions of the importance of diversity and inclusion will be frequent and full-throated when a department has no Black faculty but weak and inconsistent when the department does. In fact, I have had colleagues openly express the sentiment that diversity issues are not important because of my lone presence in the department. And as a result, when opportunities to hire highly qualified Black scholars have presented themselves, the department did not take the actions necessary to do so. Thus, one reason for the lack of critical masses of Black criminologists is the notion that diversity is achieved with the addition of one Black criminologist as a faculty member.

Yet, the more fundamental cause of the dearth of Black faculty in CCJ program is the absence of an abundance of African Americans with doctorates in fields relevant to criminology and criminal justice. A recent study found that only 7% of those earning a doctorate in criminology between 2010 and 2015 were Black, but a much higher percentage (16%) of undergraduates earning a bachelor’s degree from CCJ programs were Black (Updegrove et al., 2018). By contrast, 85% of those earning CCJ doctorates are White, but Whites make up only 59% of undergraduate CCJ degree earners. These findings indicate that while there are large numbers of capable Black undergraduates interested in CCJ, relatively few of these students pursue a doctorate in comparison to Whites. The implication of these findings is that some combination of financial pressures or unfamiliarity with opportunities to attend graduate school lead to fewer Black undergraduates pursuing post-baccalaureate degree relative to Whites. Certainly, disparities in economic resources cause more Blacks than Whites to enter the workforce after earning a bachelor’s degree. Thus, one potential way to increase the number of African Americans earning doctorates in CCJ is to increase the number of scholarships and fellowships available to deserving Black students.

But I know from my time serving as graduate director that many talented students of all races have a basic lack of understanding about post-baccalaureate educational opportunities—just as I did years ago. When I was a graduate director, I asked my colleagues to send me the names and email addresses of students they believed would do well in graduate school. I also personally looked for talented undergraduates with a special emphasis on capable minority students. Once identified, I invited the students to meet with me one-on-one to discuss graduate school. The majority of the students I met with had little knowledge of graduate school in general and CCJ graduate programs in particular. They often did not know about CCJ graduate programs nor of the potential benefits of obtaining post-baccalaureate degrees in CCJ. They did not know how to apply to graduate school. And they certainly did not know that many CCJ Ph.D. programs offer fellowships and assistantships to help defray costs. The students I met with were as clueless about graduate school as I was years ago.

This lack of knowledge about post-baccalaureate CCJ opportunities is not a failing of the students I met with. Instead, their ignorance about graduate school is our collective failing as a field. We must do better at educating talented students about CCJ graduate programs and their benefits. And if we are ever to have a bounty of Blacks with CCJ doctorates, we must do a better job of identifying students who would do well in such programs and educating these students about the contours of graduate school education.

Once Black students enter CCJ graduate programs, we must do better at making them feel welcomed and valued. Too often, Black students leave CCJ graduate programs due to negative interactions of various forms with non-African American faculty. If we are ever to have a bounty of Black scholars in our field, CCJ departments must be united and uniformly committed to student success. As part of that commitment, whenever a Black student leaves a CCJ graduate program prematurely, every effort should be made to understand the barriers to success that led to this outcome. When those barriers reside in the department, every reasonable effort should be made to remedy them.

Yet, one of the biggest barriers to Black faculty and Black graduate students is academia’s obsession with credentialing. We select which students to admit to our graduate programs based largely on undergraduate GPAs and GRE scores, neither of which in my experience are highly predictive of which graduate students excel. In fact, I once tried to predict which students did well (e.g., graduated in timely fashion) and which did poorly (e.g., did not complete the program) using data from every student who ever attended that department’s graduate program, based only on the information available at the time of the admission including undergraduate GPA and GRE scores. None of the variables in my analysis predicted either outcome. After conducting this project, I became convinced that making admissions decisions on these variables which are negatively correlated with race is both faulty and leads to racial disparities in admissions.

Credentialing in hiring decisions is also faulty and racially disparate. Employment searches, particularly when a CCJ department already has at least one Black faculty member, evaluate more favorability the credentials of White applicants, who themselves had the excellent (and racially biased) credentials necessary to gain admission to top criminology programs. The credentials of Black applicants are viewed as niche, too focused on race/class/poverty status, methodologically weak, and too qualitatively oriented, among many other negative assessments. The process of conducting job searches in CCJ programs and perhaps academia more generally is maddening, absurd, and works against Black applicants whenever Black faculty members are already present. These factors produce the harmful tokenism evident across CCJ programs and need to end if the field is ever to truly diversify beyond tokenism.