To what extent does racial discrimination exist within the criminal justice system, and to what extent is that inequality in crime and justice an outgrowth of structured societal inequality? The empirical picture of racism and criminal justice is complex, and although a large body of valuable research on the intersection of race and crime exists, new and innovative research is needed. This special volume of The ANNALS lays a solid foundation for that research.

Examining the causes, consequences, and potentially dynamic and interactive processes that sustain racial and ethnic differences in criminal offending, victimization, and justice processing, this volume of The ANNALS takes an important step toward presenting cutting-edge empirical research in this area. It takes an expansive and critical view of the relationships among race, ethnicity, crime, and justice.

The provocative articles included in this volume are an outgrowth of the work of the Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network (RDCJN), which was originally organized to bring together a diverse group of scholars to stimulate, conduct, and support scholarship that deepens and challenges current knowledge on racial and ethnic differentials in all aspects of crime and justice.

This volume is organized into three broad sections that represent the types of emergent research from this network of scholars and focuses on patterns, processes, and consequences:

* Section I discusses patterns of race-ethnic inequality in crime and justice.

* Section II investigates specific social processes that link race/ethnicity to inequitable patterns of crime and justice.

* Section III emphasizes the societal consequences of racialized crime and justice patterns, processes and policy.

This volume of The ANNALS provides an innovative approach to understanding the ways that race, ethnicity, crime, and justice are interconnected within the racialized U.S. society, but it also fosters solutions to inequalities in the criminal justice arena. Students, scholars and policymakers will find this collection of cutting-edge articles avoids taking a one-size-fits-all approach to problems of inequity and offers meaningful and novel perspectives to this complex volume.