This annotated bibliography explores racial inequalities in the criminal justice system, specifically focusing on the topic of ethnicity and crime. The first article by Meng et al. investigates racial profiling of black youth in Toronto, revealing a significant disparity in stop-and-search incident...
Annotated Bibliography- Ethnicity and Crime 854 WORDS
In this annotated bibliography the chosen topic is ethnicity and crime because I believe that criminal
justice system affects people of various ethnicities differently. For example, one of the key themes
that will be explored throughout this annotated bibliography, with the use of journal articles, is the
theme of stop and search of black youth to help dive deeper into the debates surrounding the issues
of racial inequalities in the criminal justice system. Furthermore, another theme that will be being
explored relating to the topic of ethnicity and crime is the theme of ethnic differences in prison,
which again will help us address some of the issues and debates for racial inequalities in the criminal
justice system.
Meng, Y. et al (2015) Is there Racial Discrimination in Police Stop- and- Searches of Black Youth? A
Toronto Case Study, Canadian Journal of Family and Youth, 7 (1), PP. 115-148
The authors of this journal article were investigating the racial profiling of black youth in Toronto.
They provide strong evidence suggesting that black youth are subjected to a substantial amount
more of stop and searches for guns, drugs and other suspicious activity related reasons.
Furthermore, they also found that in neighborhoods where there are more white people living,
there were more drug related stop and searches of black youth. This links to the theme of ethnicity
and crime because this article clearly shows that according to their research black youth are being
singled out and searched more based on the sole fact that they are black which is a huge issue and
shows the racial inequality within the criminal justice system.
However, a limitation of this article is the fact that this research only took place in the city of Toronto
making it unable to be generalized to the wider world and therefore we are unsure if this racial
discrimination of young black youth is unique to Toronto or can be seen across the world. A way this
could be amended to make the findings more generalizable is to research more places and
communities and see if there are any correlations between them on the topic of crime and ethnicity.
Coid, J. et al (2002) Ethnic Differences in Prisoners. 1 Criminality and Psychiatric Morbidity, The
British Journal of Psychiatry: The Journal of Mental Science, 181, PP.471-480
Similarly, this author explores the topic of ethnicity and crime through the theme of ethnic
differences in prisons. The aims of their study were to find out the differences in imprisonments of
different ethnic groups and compare psychiatric morbidity and criminal behavior. Their results found
that there were higher rates of imprisonment for black people and overall lower rates for South
Asians. They concluded that although black people, more specifically in this study African-
Caribbeans, showed less psychiatric morbidity than white prisoners there were still more black
people being admitted to secure hospitals. This would suggest that there is an inconsistency
surrounding the admissions procedure involving ethnic groups. This article links perfectly to the first
article as they both show research that suggest people of black heritage are being more likely to be
incarcerated or held under more suspicion than people of white heritage. Furthermore, it helps
support my point that different ethnic groups are being affected by the criminal justice system
differently.
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