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17 J. Ethnicity Crim. Just. 1 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/wecj17 and id is 1 raw text is: JOURNAL OF ETHNICITY IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE 2019, VOL. 17, NO. 1, 1-15 Routledge https://doi.org/10.1080/15377938.2018.1512918 Taylor&Francis Group Perceptions of the criminal justice system by minority and majority group university students: The role of ethnic identity Cynthia Willis Esqueda, Madeline J. Schlosser, Rosa Hazel Delgado, and David Orozco Garcia Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Minorities are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, Received 19 July 2017 and prior research has indicated ethnic minorities and Whites Revised 11 August 2018 have different opinions of and different experiences within Accepted 14 August 2018 the system. While differences have been shown, the influence of ethnic identity on perceptions of the legal systern has been Ey or s overlooked. The purpose of the present research was to deter- police-community relations mine if there were differences in perceptions of the legal sys- tem by ethnic identity levels for ethnic minorities and Whites. Results indicated differences do exist and ethnic identity is a crucial issue in understanding resonance with the legal sys- tem. Future directions for incorporating ethnic identity in research on the criminal justice systemR are discussed. Minorities, particularly males, are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, and this disparity has been noted since the 1800s (see Roettger & Swisher, 2011). Black and Hispanic males have a much higher chance of going to prison than White males (Bonczar & Beck, 1997; Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999), for both state and federal prison systems (Chakawa, Butler, & Shapiro, 2015; Nellis, 2016). The reasons for the dis- parity can originate from several sources (i.e., biased decision-making, inci- dence of crime commission, policy), but stereotypes about who commits crime exist. Stereotypes about criminality and minority's propensity for crime commission (especially by males) are of long standing (Espinoza, Willis-Esqueda, Toscano, & Coons, 2015; Spencer, Charbonneau, & Glaser, 2016; Willis-Esqueda & Swanson, 1997; Wollard, Harvell, & Graham, 2008). These criminality stereotypes are not only expressed by citizens, but also by members of law enforcement and are believed to stem from implicit racial biases (Taylor, Turner, Esbensen, & Winfree, 2001), as well as explicit negative attitudes (Christopher Commission, 1991), about minorities by police officers. CONTACT Cynthia Willis Esqueda 0 cwillis-esquedal@unl.edu ( Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 336 Burnett Hall, Lincoln, NE, USA 68588-0308. CO 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC