Race and Criminology in the Post-Racial Age

• In Event: Critical Discourses within Criminological Theory and the Administration of Justice

Abstract

Race as a criminological subject has not been contextualized enough within a socio-historical context with respect to mainstream criminology. The racialization of mass incarceration along with other cruel racial disparities within the administration of justice has yet to be conceptualized into theory that bares both historical and contemporary significance. Much of the race-based “empirical” literature is contaminated with misconceptions and incomplete solutions that are void of true historical and present day implications. We argue that present methods of social control cannot be analyzed without including the historical framework from which they come. This paper will theoretically examine race within the context of social control. Utilizing Mill’s challenge of the “sociological imagination,” the authors will utilize a contemporary social historical framework to examine the role of social control in the post-racial age.

Authors

• Jason M. Williams, Fairleigh Dickinson University

• Sean Wilson, Texas Southern University