Spectrum of Racialized Social Control: A Comparative Analysis of Correctional Supervision, Immigration Enforcement, and Hate Crimes

• In Event: Islamophobia, Immigration, and Social Control

Abstract

Racialized populations are regulated and repressed through punitive racialized social control practices, which in turn establishes social control as a system of racialization (Ward, 2009). Considering the long history of racial violence and domination in the United States (U.S.), as well mass incarceration, the post-9/11 socio-political context, and mass immigration enforcement, it becomes vital to explore the spectrum of racialized social control. To do so, this study employs a critical race criminology approach, expanding racialized social control to also include immigration enforcement and racially-motivated hate crimes (Dow, 2004; Perry, 2009). Specifically, we engage in an explorative and comparative analysis of racially-stratified social control across formal and informal measures, including rates of correctional supervision, immigration enforcement, and reported racially-motivated hate crimes in the U.S. In doing so, we use the 1996-2012 Bureau of Justice Statistics reports, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. The findings capture the continued intensity and harshness of anti-Black racism and the salience of the criminalization of Blackness, the complicated racialization and criminalization of Chicanos/Latinos, and the drastic intensification in the social control of Muslims and racialized ‘Muslim-looking’ Arabs and Middle Easterners after 9/11 across social control measures.

Authors

• Jasmine Linnea Kelekay, University of California, Santa Barbara

• Ana Campos-Holland, Connecticut College