Criminal law and criminology: a survey of recent books.

• Author: Ferrall, Bard R.

CRIMINOLOGY

DARNELL F. HAWKINS, ED., VIOLENT CRIME: ASSESSING RACE AND ETHNIC DIFFERENCES (Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 2003) 432 PP.

This book offers numerous contributors' views on areas of further research regarding the correlation between ethnicity and crime. Several contributors review particular statistical compilations of United States homicides to compare levels of involvement by various ethnic and racial groups, including American and European Caucasians, African-Americans, Latinos or Hispanics, Haitians, Native North-Americans, and the Maori in New Zealand. The authors note that even when a correlation between homicide rates and ethnicity is found, other structural factors, such as economic deprivation and the higher concentration of residents in impoverished black communities, should be studied. (In rural communities where impoverished whites are concentrated at levels similar to those of impoverished urban blacks, homicide rates are also at similar levels.) The correlation between homicide rate and ethnicity may be significantly reduced when these other factors are controlled in the studies. Even when homicide rates are found to be higher among middle class blacks than middle class whites, for example, the greater proximity of middle class black communities to poorer communities may be a contributing factor. Community disorganization, family problems and exposure to street life--factors associated with greater criminal involvement--also impact many ethnic and racial minorities at greater rate. At the same time, minority status, as well as the labeling effect of criminal sanction, may exacerbate the effects of these factors. One contributor looks at what is known about homicides committed by whites against minorities in England and Wales and suggests that levels of clearly racist murders may indicate much larger kinds of victimization where the racial factor is more ambiguous. A need for development of conceptual frameworks is identified, as well as improved quantitative and qualitative statistical techniques to estimate the levels of, define the types of, and identify the motivations for racially based violence, and thereby to find effective methods of reduction. Two contributors look at the great risk of domestic abuse to women of ethnic minorities. One contributor notes that though the severest forms of domestic violence against black women have declined, lesser acts of abuse have increased, resulting in "coercive control." When these lesser acts are...