Disproportionate Minority Contact and Racism in the US: How We Failed Children of Color by Paul R. Ketchum and B. Mitchell Peck

Abstract

This book speaks to two different audiences, and I applaud the authors for the efforts they made to reach both. One audience, the one I fall into that is critical of crime data and its overreliance to criminalize communities of color, might wish this book was titled “Police Data is Self-Report Data,” while the other audience might be drawn in because of the title's nods to criminology specific language. But the tension of writing for both audiences makes this an even more interesting read. The authors' central argument, weaved through eight chapters, is that minoritized youth are over-policed because of a racialized system (both institutional racism and actors) that has consistently overgeneralized (incorrectly) high rates of violent crimes of a small proportion of minoritized youth to the larger population. Furthermore, they seek to answer: To what extent is minority overrepresentation in the juvenile justice system due to differential involvement/behavior (i.e., non-White youth commit crimes at a higher rate) and to what extent is minority overrepresentation attributable to differential treatment (i.e., racism/racial bias within the system)? While they provide substantive data to tease out these two related questions, I want to start with the contributions of this book for criminologists and for race scholars who study the carceral state. I've probably read more than once the idea that police data are self-report data, but it is the one thing readers will contemplate well after they finish the book. If you've ever taught criminology or criminal justice courses, you probably know that most criminology textbooks and courses cover two types of data: official and unofficial. In the same way that we like to create sharp distinctions between quantitative and qualitative data, this official/unofficial dichotomy steers us to think that one is deemed more suitable for our research endeavors. But the authors are careful to point out that the overreliance on “official” data misses so much of the bigger picture. Furthermore, the authors note that “learning, strain, positivists and, perhaps to a lesser extent, life course, rest upon arrest and conviction rates being an accurate reflection of criminality, while critical and conflict theories challenge those assumptions.” (16) I cannot praise them enough for not only picking apart the “traditional” methods but also providing innovative methodological approaches to triangulate complicated data (four datasets) while they dive deeper into a general critique of criminology more broadly. Chapters 3–5 bring together data that are not often triangulated to give a more encompassing picture of differential youth involvement and treatment. Chapter 3 begins with police contact data from the Oklahoma City metropolitan area for almost 44,000 police reports. Chapter 4 turns to records from the Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs Juvenile On-Line Tracking System and records from the juvenile proceedings in Oklahoma City municipal court. And Chapter 5 analyzes 520 self-report surveys from youth to learn more about why differential treatment occurs when they have police and court contact. The concluding chapters further push the need for youth self-report data like that included in Chapter 5, especially as we see the failure of police video evidence to bring about accountability. In addition, the authors advocate for the inclusion of youth self-report data after analyzing 83 interviews with Oklahoma City area juvenile professionals, many of whom “believe in stereotypes regarding non-White families having significantly different value systems and lower involvement of parents.” (p. 147). Unfortunately, the belief in those stereotypes moves young people of color disproportionately into the juvenile justice system and this chapter shows us how these professionals justify their positions. Overall, the title of this book doesn't adequately convey the intricate story the authors are trying to tell, but it is a title that will draw some in who would like to believe that the criminal justice system is not racist. What those people will read is something that forces them to consider how their work and research contribute to the further criminalization of young people of color. This book is packed with information and intricately weaves together multiple data sources, a challenge that more scholars should take seriously, and Chapter 6 alone should be used in methods courses across undergraduate and graduate levels. I only wish that the concluding remarks in support of defunding the police and then advocating for community policing were reconciled by the end of the book.