Annotated Bibliography-Black American Inequalities Justice Reform

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Annotated Bibliography-Black American Inequalities Justice Reform

Donnelly, Ellen A. “The politics of racial disparity reform: Racial inequality and criminal justice policymaking in the states.” American Journal of Criminal Justice 42.1 (2017): 1-27.

Ellen Donnelly authored the 2017 study published by the American Journal of Criminal Justice. Donnelly is affiliated with the Department of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania and has authored numerous other publications. Regarding the context of the study, racial inequalities within the criminal justice system have become a pressing problem for policymakers. Previous research suggests that elected individuals promulgated racially disparate criminal justice because of racial fears and partisanship, however, scholars are yet to explain why and how elected individuals addressed racial problems within the criminal justice system. This study introduces a framework of racial disparity reforms to policymaking. The policy would seek to reduce distinctions in the treatment of racial groups within the criminal justice system. The author examines political and social explanations for when state executives and legislatures adopt racial disparity reforms. The conclusion is that policy enactment tends to be predicted by problems of racial disproportion in criminal processing, which keeps getting worse.

Donnelly, Ellen A. “The disproportionate minority contact mandate: An examination of its impacts on juvenile justice processing outcomes (1997-2011).” Criminal Justice Policy Review 28.4 (2017): 347-369.

The article “The disproportionate minority contact mandate: An examination of its impacts on juvenile justice processing outcomes” was drafted by Ellen Donnelly. Donnelly is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA. Congress developed the Disproportionate Minority Confinement and later Contact (DMC) to curtail the overrepresentation of minorities in the United States juvenile system. Currently, the federal provision requires states to reduce the disproportionate number of minorities that are handled during juvenile processing stages. This research uses original juvenile processing data from Pennsylvania to assess if the DMC mandate has reduced the number of processed minority youth populations. Empirical assessments show that DMC mandate successfully produced substantial declines in processing of minority in the state’s juvenile system. The author concluded that the results pointed to a potential national reform to rectify racial inequalities in the juvenile system. The text is reliable as it was published by Sage Journals, a renowned and credible publisher.

Hinton, Elizabeth, L. Henderson, and Cindy Reed. “An unjust burden: The disparate treatment of black Americans in the criminal justice system.” Vera Institute of Justice (2018): 1-20.

The article was written by Elizabeth Hinton, LeShae Henderson, and Cindy Reed. Elizabeth Hinton is an Assistant Professor at Harvard University’s Department of African and African American Studies. Leshae Henderson is a Special Assistant in Research at Vera Institute of Justice, and Cindy Reed is a Senior Editor at Vera Instititute of Justice. The over-representation of black Americans in the justice system has been well documented over the years. The main reason for this disproportionate representation is rooted in U.S history and perpetuated by ongoing practices. This study shows an overview of how America’s history of oppression and racism keeps manifesting in the justice system. Further, it summarizes research and demonstrates how the criminal justice system perpetuates the disproportionate treatment of people of color. The intended audience for this text was fellow academicians, students, and politicians.

Hinton, Elizabeth, and DeAnza Cook. “The mass criminalization of Black Americans: A historical overview.” Annual Review of Criminology 4 (2021): 261-286.

The 2021 article focuses on synthesizing the historical literature on the incarceration and criminalization of black people for an interdisciplinary audience. The study draws on key insights from new histories in the American carceral studies field. The authors trace the many ways in which officials and policymakers in all levels of government have employed policing, criminal law, and imprisonment to exert social control on predominant black communities from colonial period to the present. The researchers underscore the anti-black tradition in America as critical to developing mass-incarceration and crime control strategies. The study provides an important context regarding ongoing research, discussions, and experiments interested in the long-standing effects of violence, racism, and inequity. Elizabeth Hinton is affiliated with the Department of History and African American studies at Yale Law School at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. DeAnza Cook, on the other hand, is affiliated with the Department of History at Harvard University at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Hirschfield, Paul J. “The role of schools in sustaining juvenile justice system inequality.” The Future of children 28.1 (2018): 11-36.

Children tend to contribute to disproportionate contact with minorities at the juvenile justice systems in various ways. Students who break the rules tend to be more subject to suspensions, increasing their chances of arrest and delinquency. The author Hirschfield assesses two ways in which schools tend to extend the disproportionate contact that minorities have with the criminal justice system. Hirschfield insists that if properly targeted and implemented, some interventions and policies have a promise of helping schools reduce the role they play in the justice system inequality. The information in the study is reliable, judging by the journal and publisher information. The article was published by the Future of Children journal that focuses exclusively on matters pertaining to children. It is well renowned and is overseen by the communication office of Princeton University, making it even more credible.