Unequal Justice: Question of Color (Blacks in the Diaspora) - Hardcover

OMann has produced an illuminating, thoroughly researched, and comprehensive treatment of the experiences of minorities in the criminal justice system. The book dispassionately provides persuasive evidence of the disparate treatment of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans in the criminal justice system. The history of each group and its experiences in the criminal justice system is described at every stage, from arrest through incarceration. "Unequal Justice" underscores the urgent need to find a way to promote justice in our legal system today. "Unequal Justice: A Question of Color" is a much-needed comprehensive examination of racial/ethnic minorities and crime. Minority activists and human rights organizations are becoming increasingly vocal in their indictments of a justice system that seems hostile to peoples of color. Coramae Richey Mann demonstrates the importance of skin color in determining how individuals are treated by the legal system. Criminologists, law enforcement agencies, and criminal justice policymakers agree that minority groups in the United States are disproportionately involved in crime. This fact is typically explained as resulting from the prevalence of various criminogenic factors within minority cultures, high unemployment, criminal subculture, relative deprivation. Experts believe that crime is a reaction to the frustration of such groups; that typical behaviors of minorities are criminalized; or that inherent structural bias in the criminal justice system leads to the overrepresentation of racial minorities in arrest and prison statistics. While it is generally assumed that race plays a role in the determination of criminality, research has not clearly demonstrated how or why this happens. In "Unequal Justice" Mann synthesizes research on race and crime through cross-cultural analyses of the experiences with the criminal justice system of four major U.S. minority groups: N African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans. This monumental compilation and examination reveals that peoples of color do not receive equal treatment from the U.S. criminal justice system.