This special issue will examine the issue of legitimacy (broadly defined, topics including but not limited to audience and/or powerholder legitimacy, procedural justice, confidence in criminal justice agencies, legality of law, compliance to the law, police effectiveness etc.) with a focus on racial-ethnic minority relationships in criminal justice system worldwide.
The violent and senseless death of George Floyd in the USA that has galvanized the recent international Black Lives Matter movement is one of the many tragedies representative of the history of global racialized criminal justice systems, Canada included. The criminal justice system of Canada has a disturbing and problematic history of oppression and colonialism in its treatment of racial minorities, involving excessive police force, disproportionate policing of minorities, sentencing disparities, and overrepresentation of indigenous persons in the criminal justice system.
Contributions are sought from scholars in criminology, law and sociology, capturing interdisciplinary work in which the concept of “legitimacy” is broadly conceived, and which contributes to the field of criminal justice and racial-ethnic minority relationships. Submissions are welcomed which evaluate police legitimacy, correction, courts and sentencing research with a focus on major judicial reforms or the contemporary issues relating to post-colonial policies on indigenous communities and other racial/ethnic groups.
Although we’d like to have submissions with Canadian data, this special issue is not limited to Canadian data. Regardless where the data are from, the Canadian relevance should be reflected in the manuscript with a thorough review of the relevant Canadian literature and with reasonable speculation of the findings to Canadian situations.
Author Information
Abstracts of 200 words, including objectives, methods, and expected results/analyses, should be sent to the guest editor (email below). Submissions are received on a competitive basis and will be reviewed by the guest editor. A selection will be accepted and the full manuscript subject to peer review (deadline for submission of final manuscript TBC with contributors at a later date).
Abstracts should be sent to the guest editor by June 15, 2021.
For more details/enquiries, please contact the guest editor, Dr. Liqun Cao (liqun.cao@uoit.ca) or the editorial assistant, Jeffrey Mathesius (jeffrey_mathesius@sfu.ca).
The PDF version of this call for papers can be found here: