Ethnicity and Crime: A Reader Book

“Basia Spalek has compiled an excellent reader about a much researched and highly sensitive subject. Crucially, she contextualises ethnicity and crime within broadly defined social and intellectual contexts, avoiding the limitation of all too frequently repeated research based solely on statistical measures and policy evaluations.”

Simon Holdaway, Professor of Criminology and Sociology, Sheffield University

Issues in relation to race and ethnicity have generated substantial and ever-growing interest from, and within, a multitude of academic, research and policy contexts. This book brings together important material in race and ethnic studies and provides different ways of thinking about race and ethnicity in relation to crime and the criminal justice system.

Ethnicity and Crime: A Reader consists of a collection of works that capture the main themes that arise from within this vast area of work. It is divided into five sections:

• ‘Race and crime’, racial discrimination and criminal justice
• The racialisation of crime: Social, political and cultural contexts
• Race, ethnicity and victimisation
• Self and discipline reflexivity: Ethnic identities and crime
• Ethnic identities, institutional reflexivity and crime

Each section contains recurring and overlapping themes and includes many different ways of thinking about race and ethnicity in relation to crime. It spans theoretical approaches that might be labelled as positivist, critical race analyses, left realist approaches, feminist, as well as post-modern perspectives.

This is the first title in the new series Readings in Criminology and Criminal Justice and follows the series format of thematic sections, together with an editor's introduction to the complete volume and an introduction to each section.

Basia Spalek is Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Criminal Justice Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK.