Rena Zito, assistant professor of sociology, and co-authors Stacy De Coster and Jennifer Lutz of N.C. State University have published a chapter in The Handbook of Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice.
Rena Zito, assistant professor of sociology, and co-authors Stacy De Coster and Jennifer Lutz of N.C. State University have published a chapter on the role of racisms in theories of criminal offending in The Handbook of Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice.
De Coster, Zito, and Lutz’s chapter, “Racisms and Crime: Racialized Elaborations of General Theories of Offending,” provides an overview of structural and individual-level perspectives that integrate traditional theories of offending with a racialized perspective to consider how various forms of racism embedded in public policies, social institutions, and everyday interactions influence the race gap in street offending by shaping the communities and experiences of people differentially situated in racial hierarchies.
Traditional criminological theories – including social disorganization, social control, differential association, and strain theories – provide a starting point for understanding the race gap in street offending observed across and within communities. Unpacking the race gap in street crime, however, requires embedding traditional theories within a racialized perspective that explicitly accounts for the myriad ways in which structural and interpersonal racisms collude to shape the material conditions, social environments, and interpersonal dynamics relevant to offending.
The Handbook of Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice is edited by Ramiro Martinez, Meghan E. Hollis, and Jacob I. Stowell and was published by Wiley-Blackwell in June 2018. Find more information on the book here.