The impact of race on perceptions of criminal injustice

Based on a stratified sample of 239 residents of Cincinnati, Ohio, the present study explored whether African Americans and Whites differ in their perceptions of racial injustice in the criminal justice system. The data revealed a cleavage in the extent to which the races believed that Black citizens would be differentially stopped by the police, given a speeding ticket, jailed, and sentenced to death. The effect of race remained strong even when controls were introduced for sociodemographic characteristics, experience with the criminal justice system, experience with crime, neighborhood disorder, and political and crime related ideology. Perceptions of injustice, moreover, were strongest among the least affluent African Americans. The possibility that the racial divide in perceived criminal injustice both reflects and contributes to a larger racial chasm in how Black and White citizens understand and experience their lives in American society is explored.     

Who Is Helping the Homeless? Local, State, and Federal Responses

This article examines the sources of support for services forthe homeless. It delineates the extensive role of the privatesector in both funding and actually delivering shelter, meal,and other services for the homeless. It also indicates the extentto which certain states are providing financial support forhomeless services, and the relation of new federal efforts throughprograms funded by the Stewart B. McKinney Homeless AssistanceAct to state and private activities.     

Economic conditions and punishment in Postbellum Georgia

This paper examines the relationship between economic conditions and incarceration in Georgia between 1868 and 1936. Time-series analysis provides evidence that declining cotton prices increased the rate at which both black and white males were incarcerated. Changes in cotton production, declines in racial economic inequality, and demographic shifts also affected incarceration rates. Each had quite different implications for black and white punishment, however. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for research on punishment in general and Southern punishment in particular.     

The Evolving Right to Travel: Saenz v. Roe

Although the 1996 federal welfare-reform law shifted more authorityfor welfare policy to the states-including authority to providelower benefits to new state-residents than to longer term residents-theU. S. Supreme Court's decision in Saenz v. Roe delineates alimit on that authority, namely, that states cannot discriminateagainst citizens based on their length of in-state residency.The Court's reliance on the Fourteenth Amendment's privilegesor immunities clause in Saenz, while surprising after its longdormancy, is not a departure from prior precedent. What remainsto be seen is whether states will attempt to avoid the decision'simplications by adopting new variations on residency laws, andwhether the revival of the privileges or immunities clause willlead to a rearticulalion of individual civil rights, based ona new understanding of national citizenship.     

'No! I'm Not a Refugee!' The Poetics of Be-Longing among Young Oromos in Toronto

This paper presents some findings from an empirical study carriedout with young Oromos living in Toronto. To capture the complexitiesof negotiating be-longing, the paper offers dispersal–affinity—anew conceptual framework empirically grounded in an innovativemethodological design. Using participants' narratives in theempirical material, the paper contests the dualism created betweenessentialist and constructionist perspectives. It employs dispersal–affinityto explore participants' understandings of ‘the refugee’and the wider processes of refugeeization and refugee be-longing.Findings suggest that be-longing is a project of selfhood thatis both fixed and constantly shifting. It is argued that be-longingis constructed from the same movements of selfhood within andthrough social relationships. Young Oromos employ both essentialistand constructionist discourses to weave multiple layers of fixedand mobile be-longing. Implications for refugee studies arediscussed wherein dispersal–affinity is offered to criticallyengage the recent debate on ‘deceit and trickery’among refugees.