Criminological Perspectives on Race and Crime

By Shaun L. Gabbidon
New York, N.Y.: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2007

When examining criminal behavior and the processing of offenders through various criminal justice systems, scholars have long hypothesized of a correlation between race/ethnicity and crime.  Despite this long history of assumed association there has remained a void in the literature of a single examination devoted solely to empirical understanding of the theoretical explanations of race, criminal behavior and criminal justice system processing.  Until Gabbidon (2007) most scholars have merely devoted a cursory view of this topic by way of a single chapter in a book or section in an article.  Given the universal nature of race/ ethnicity, victimization and crime, this book provides the inquiring mind with a much needed single compilation. 

Within the confines of 10 chapters this book addresses the theoretical explanations of the racial/ethnic disparities in crime and victimization, those theories that have demonstrated the greatest empirical promise of contextualizing racial/ethnic disparities in crime and the often overlooked influence of racial/ethnic minorities in the formulation and testing of race/ethnicity, crime and victimization theory.  Each chapter provides a discussion of the basic tenants of relevant criminological theory followed by a review of empirical research focused on the effectiveness of the contextualization of race and crime theory in relation to racial/ethnic minorities.  The chapters are concluded with a discussion of the strengths and caveats of the respective theories. 

Gabbidon (2007) begins this compilation with a discussion of the history of race and how it came to be known synonymously with crime.  After adequately placing race and crime into an historical context, an examination of Lombroso and other biological perspective theorists of race and crime are discussed.  The author discusses the sociological perspective and its rebuttal of the earlier beliefs of biological and/or genetic predispositions to criminal behavior. Here Gabbidon begins to put forth the oft dismissed and undervalued input of an early African-American scholar, Dr. W.E.B. DuBios.  Dr. DuBios‘s pioneering criminological research of inner-city African Americans in the late 1800s laid the foundation by which the Chicago School of Sociology later followed.  A discussion on the etiology of the subcultural theories of criminal behavior was followed by an examination of the often accepted but rarely empirically tested labeling, social control and feminist criminological perspectives of criminal behavior.  Gabbidon examines the conflict theory research of the late 1960s and early 1970s.  As one of the most powerful chapters in the book, Gabbidon (2007) provides an extensive discussion on the influence that colonialism may have had in the correlation of criminal behavior, justice system processing and public misperception of deviant behavior around the world. 

Race/ethnicity, crime and victimization are rarely given the just deserts of a devoted book.  With this most exhaustive critique of relevant criminological theory and its application to race/ethnicity, Gabbidon respectfully and adequately provides the researcher with a benchmark with which to begin their scholarly endeavor.  As a single compilation, this book is essential for the scholar who seeks to understand the relationship between race/ethnicity, victimization and crime, as well as the student who needs a springboard from which to begin inquiry into this often overlooked area of criminological thought.