Moving Beyond Crime and Punishment Narratives and Analyses: Critical Race Theory and Racial Specificity in Youth Justice.

In criminology, a developing reliance on the analytical currency of Critical Race Theory (CRT) has found grounding on the basis of CRT’s capacity to expand what is known about the experiences of racialized peoples, beyond the conventional myopia of crime and punishment (Ugwudike, 2015; Glynn, 2013; Phillips and Bowling, 2003; Delgado and Stefancic, 1999; Crenshaw et al., 1995; Bell, 1980). The racially specific logic defining CRT’s critical scope illuminates what is known about racialized experiences of crime, punishment and justice as characteristic of both invisibility and distortion (Hills-Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1989). What is known about racialized peoples, for instance, is problematically defined without consideration for social histories, despite well established reliance on historically informed analyses to illuminate contemporary experiences of factors such as class and gender (Philips et al., 2019). CRT, therefore, contributes necessary epistemological equalization by specifying historical frames of reference, in attempting to account for, and to remedy, criminology’s neglect of racial specificity.