Special section/issue on race,ethnicity, and the law

Announcement

Special section/issue on race, ethnicity, and the law     

Race and Ethnicity in Medical Research: Requirements Meet Reality

Race and ethnicity are commonly reported variables in biomedical research, but how they were determined is often not described and the rationale for analyzing them is often not provided. JAMA improved the reporting of these factors by implementing a policy and procedure. However, still lacking are careful consideration of what is actually being measured when race/ethnicity is described, consistent terminology, hypothesis-driven justification for analyzing race/ethnicity, and a consistent and generalizable measurement of socioeconomic status. Furthermore, some studies continue to use race/ethnicity as a proxy for genetics. Research into appropriate measures of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic factors, as well as education of researchers regarding issues of race/ethnicity, is necessary to clarify the meaning of race/ethnicity in the biomedical literature.     

The Effects of Legal and Extralegal Factors on Detention Decisions in US District Courts

The Bail Reform Act of 1984 changed the law dictating release and detention decisions in federal court. Since its passage, few studies have examined judicial decision-making in this context. Legal research enables us to account for the structure and interpretation of federal detention laws and to analyze previously neglected measures of legal factors in our analyses. We use US Sentencing Commission data on a sample of defendants who were sentenced in 2007 (N?=?31,043). We find that legal factors—particularly length of criminal history, having committed a violent or otherwise serious offense, and having committed the offense while under supervision of the criminal justice system—have the strongest relationships with the presentence detention outcome. A defendant’s age, race, and ethnicity have weaker relationships with detention. When we compare defendants who are similarly situated with respect to legal factors, the probability of detention is similar regardless of age, race, and ethnicity.     

Attending to the role of race/ethnicity in family violence research

Since the 1970s, researchers and public health and/or social policy communities have devoted increasing attention to family violence. Although officially reported crime figures for family violence appear to be declining, rates continue to be high in broadly defined racial and/or ethnic minority groups. More careful assessments of the potential role of race/ethnicity in family violence, and similarities and differences occurring across and within groups categorized based on race/ethnicity, are essential if adequate interventions are to be developed and utilized. This article provides suggestions on conducting better studies on family violence in the United States, particularly with respect to issues of race/ethnicity. The authors begin by considering conceptions and definitions of race/ethnicity and providing a broad definition of family violence. They then suggest issues for consideration at each stage of the research process, from reviewing previous research, to making methodological decisions, selecting samples, choosing measures, and analyzing and interpreting findings.     

Race and Ethnicity Effects in Federal Sentencing: A Propensity Score Analysis

Research has examined the role of race and ethnicity in the punishment of offenders. Narrative and meta-analytic reviews have indicated that race/ethnicity influences key sentencing outcomes, at least under certain conditions. This research relies almost exclusively on regression-based analyses for determining race and ethnicity effects. While this technique is useful, recent statistical advances may provide more accurate race/ethnicity estimates. The current study employs propensity score analysis to compare punishment outcomes across White, Black, and Hispanic offenders sentenced in US federal courts during the years 2006 through 2008. Results suggest that (a) during the in/out decision the effect of minority status is frequently smaller than that estimated by regression modeling and (b) during the sentence length decision the effect of minority status is frequently larger than that estimated by regression modeling. Consequently, the modeling strategy may produce different conclusions regarding the presence of race- and ethnic-based disparity in sentencing outcomes.     

Lessons from History: Why Race and Ethnicity Have Played a Major Role in Biomedical Research

Before any citizen enters the role of scientist, medical practitioner, lawyer, epidemiologist, and so on, each and all grow up in a society in which the categories of human differentiation are folk categories that organize perceptions, relations, and behavior. That was true during slavery, during Reconstruction, the eugenics period, the two World Wars, and is no less true today. While every period understandably claims to transcend those categories, medicine, law, and science are profoundly and demonstrably influenced by the embedded folk notions of race and ethnicity.     

The role of race/ethnicity and race relations on public opinion related to the immigration and crime link

This article examines two hypotheses related to public opinion concerning immigration and crime. Using data from a recent Gallup poll with oversamples of Hispanics and Blacks, the research examined whether race/ethnicity and race relations matter in the public's opinion of the connection between immigration and crime. After a series of models were performed, results of the final model revealed that race relations, gender (specifically, being male), race/ethnicity, and immigrant status are influential in contextualizing public opinion on the topic. The meaning and policy implications of these findings are also reviewed.     

Race categorization and the regulation of business and science

Despite the lack of consensus regarding the meaning or significance of race or ethnicity amongst scientists and the lay public, there are legal requirements and guidelines that dictate the collection of racial and ethnic data across a range of institutions. Legal regulations are typically created through a political process and then face varying kinds of resistance when the state tries to implement them. We explore the nature of this opposition by comparing responses from businesses, scientists, and science-oriented businesses (pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies) to U.S. state regulations that used politically derived racial categorizations, originally created to pursue civil rights goals. We argue that insights from cultural sociology regarding institutional and cultural boundaries can aid understanding of the nature of resistance to regulation. The Food and Drug Administration's guidelines for research by pharmaceutical companies imposed race categories on science-based businesses, leading to objections that emphasized the autonomy and validity of science. In contrast, similar race categories regulating first business by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and later scientific research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) encountered little challenge. We argue that pharmaceutical companies had the motive (profit) that NIH-supported scientists lacked and a legitimate discourse (boundary work of science) that businesses regulated by the EEOC did not have. The study suggests the utility of a comparative cultural sociology of the politics of legal regulation, particularly when understanding race-related regulation and the importance of examining legal regulations for exploring how the meaning of race or ethnicity are contested and constructed in law.     

Guidelines for Collecting and Recording the Race and Ethnicity of Juveniles in Conjunction with Juvenile Delinquency Disposition Reporting to the Juvenile Court Judges' Commission

One of the most compelling reasons for accurate racial coding of juveniles involved in the juvenile justice system is to ensure that all youth are treated fairly, regardless of race or ethnicity. Pennsylvania juvenile courts and probation departments now have instructions and guidelines for collecting and recording race and ethnicity in compliance with Federal standards. These guidelines can be easily adopted by other states and jurisdictions.     

Shared Race/Ethnicity,Court Procedural Justice,and Self‐Regulating Beliefs: A Study of Female Offenders

Using survey data from a sample of white, black, and Hispanic incarcerated females (N = 554), we examine if the theoretically hypothesized and empirically demonstrated relationship between procedural justice and obligation to obey the law is substantiated among a sample of offenders and explore the impact that sharing the race/ethnicity of the defense attorney and prosecutor in their most recent conviction has on female inmates' perceptions of court procedural justice and their perceived obligation to obey the law. The findings reveal that female offenders who perceive the courts as more procedurally just report a significantly greater obligation to obey the law. In addition, white female inmates who had a white prosecutor were significantly more likely to perceive the courts as procedurally just. Non‐whites, though, perceive the courts as more fair if they encountered a minority prosecutor regardless of whether the prosecutor was black or Hispanic.     

RACE,ETHNICITY, THREAT AND THE LABELING OF CONVICTED FELONS*

Florida law allows judges to withhold adjudication of guilt for persons who have either pled guilty or been found guilty of a felony. This provision may apply only to persons who will be sentenced to probation, and it allows such individuals to retain all civil rights and to truthfully assert they had not been convicted of a felony. This paper examines the effects of race and Hispanic ethnicity on the withholding of adjudication for 91,477 males sentenced to probation in Florida between 1999 and 2002. Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling is used to assess the direct effects of defendant attributes as well as the cross‐level interactions between race, ethnicity and community level indicators of threat, such as percentage black and Hispanic and concentrated disadvantage. Our results show that Hispanics and blacks are significantly less likely to have adjudication withheld when other individual and community level factors are controlled. This effect is especially pronounced for blacks and for drug offenders. Cross‐level interactions show that concentrated disadvantage has a substantial effect on the adjudication withheld outcome for both black and Hispanic defendants. The implications of these results for the conceptualization of racial/ethnic threat at the individual, situational and social levels are discussed.     

Police Support for Community Problem-Solving and Broken Windows Policing

This paper explores overall police officer acceptance of tactics and tenets of broken windows and community problem-solving policing. It assesses differential support for each by police officer characteristics (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender, rank, education level, years of service, and assignment). This study presents the findings of a survey of 227 sworn police personnel from two urban police departments. Univariate analyses reveal the levels of support that police have for certain police tactics and tenets of broken windows and community problem-solving policing. Regression analyses examine the relationship between key officer characteristics and support for these tactics and tenets as measured by respondents’ agreement with various items and indices. Findings include support for community problem-solving (and also a reliance on traditional policing methods); a lag in investigators’ acceptance of community problem-solving; and differences by officer race/ethnicity, education, rank, and assignment in indices related to broken windows and rapid response policing. The differential acceptance of broken windows and rapid response tactics by race/ethnicity suggests interesting implications for future studies of race/ethnicity and broken windows policing. The greater acceptance of certain tactics by patrol officers supports current moves toward innovating in police investigations’ bureaus.     

College students’ perceptions of police use of force: do suspect race and ethnicity matter?

Incidents of police use of force continue to draw a considerable amount of attention from both researchers and the public alike. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between suspect race and ethnicity and perceptions of police use of force among college students. Using a vignette research design with manipulated independent variables, this study seeks to answer the question: Do suspect race and ethnicity affect college students’ perceptions of police use of force? Three vignettes were developed regarding an incident in which an encounter between a suspect and a police officer resulted in the officer using force. College students were randomly assigned to one of the three vignettes and were asked to complete a questionnaire. Results indicate that although suspect race and ethnicity do not predict perceptions of police use of force among college students, there are significant respondent race and gender effects. Male and white respondents are significantly more likely to perceive police use of force as justified compared to female and non-white respondents. The policy implications of these findings for police-citizen interactions are discussed.     

Sex, race/ethnicity, and context in school-associated student homicides

This study assessed the importance of sex, race/ethnicity, and geographic context for incidents of school-associated student homicides between July 1, 1994 and June 30, 1999, covering 5 academic years. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention School Associated Violent Deaths Study (n = 125 incidents), we compared percentages and medians of victim, offender, motive, and school characteristics for incidents by geographic context and race/ethnicity of the offenders. Most incidents involved urban areas (53.6%), Black and Latino offenders and victims, moderately high youth poverty, and male on male violence (77.6%) driven by disputes and gang-related motives. Suburban area incidents (31.2%) often involved offenders and victims of a different race/ethnicity (51.3%). Multiple victims and White offenders were more common in rural areas (15.2%). More than 50% of the rural incidents involved male offenders and female victims. White offender incidents more often included multiple victims and female victims while Black and Latino offenders more often included single victims of the same sex. These results emphasize the utility of an incident-based analysis of school-associated student homicides in highlighting important variations by intersections of sex, race/ethnicity, and geographic context.     

Explaining the race/ethnicity–violence relationship: Neighborhood context and social psychological processes

Blacks and Latinos have higher levels of offending than Whites for violent crimes. Researchers have examined a range of explanations that primarily focus on race and have only begun to consider how macro contexts influence individual levels of violence. This study contributes to this literature by including both race and ethnicity, and by examining the role of social psychological processes in mediating the impact of neighborhood contexts on violence. Using the Add Health data, I demonstrate the importance of the neighborhood context, socioeconomic status, and social psychological processes in explaining the relationship between race, ethnicity and violence. Having witnessed and been victimized by violence is by far the most important social psychological process in explaining this relationship.     

Are police-reported driving while Black data a valid indicator of the race and ethnicity of the traffic law violators police stop? A negative answer with minor qualifications

Are police-reported driving while Black data a valid indicator of the race and ethnicity of the drivers police stop? This research answered that question by advancing the first multivariate analysis of race and ethnicity missingness in the traffic stop data reported by Boston police during April and May of 2001. The most important multivariate story the data tell was that race and ethnicity missingness was significantly nonrandom on multiple dimensions, including the second month of data collection, for drivers living in zip codes with above average and average people of color, for drivers living in zip codes with above average and average poor people, and for drivers whose stop ended in a ticket. The results therefore supported a clear answer to a fundamentally important question about the validity of the driving while Black data reported by police. Based upon the present research and with minor qualifications, police-reported driving while Black data were not valid because they underestimated the frequency with which police stop drivers of color.     

Ethnic Profiling: A Rising Challenge for European Human Rights Law

Ethnic profiling, defined as the use of racial, ethnic or religious background as a determining criterion for the adoption of law enforcement decisions, has been rising significantly in Europe, in particular in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. This article examines whether European human rights law is well equipped to deal with this challenge, and if not, how it should be reformed. Against the widely held assumption that personal data protection legislation is insufficiently protective of 'sensitive' data relating to race or ethnicity, it explains instead why combating ethnic profiling has been made more difficult, rather than less, by an overly protective reading of the requirements of data protection laws. It then discusses the additional measures that European states could take to address more effectively the human rights concerns prompted by the development of ethnic profiling.     

Examining All-cause and Cause-specific Mortality among Former Prisoners in Pennsylvania

Former prisoners have a higher than expected risk of death following release from incarceration. However, little is known about the specific risk factors for post-release mortality among former prisoners. The current study uses a unique set of measures obtained from administrative records from Pennsylvania to examine demographic, custodial, behavioral, and criminal history factors that impact mortality risk following release from incarceration. Moreover, this study is the first to assess whether risk factors for post-release mortality are consistent or variable across race and ethnicity. Using data from the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and mortality records from the Pennsylvania Department of Health we find several demographic, custodial, behavioral, and criminal history measures are related to post-release mortality risk. Moreover, while most risk factors for mortality are generally consistent across race and ethnicity, we find evidence that some custodial and criminal history factors vary by race and ethnicity.     

Genotyping the future: scientists' expectations about race/ ethnicity after BiDil

The ongoing debate about the FDA approval of BiDil in 2005 demonstrates how the first racially/ethnically licensed drug is entangled in both Utopian and dystopian future visions about the continued saliency of race/ethnicity in science and medicine. Drawing on the sociology of expectations, this paper analyzes how scientists in the field of pharmacogenetics are constructing certain visions of the future with respect to the use of social categories of race/ethnicity and the impact of high-throughput genotyping technologies that promise to transform scientific practices.