Book Description

Investigating Differenceis the first book to provide an overview of such a broad range of diverse groups within the criminal justice system. It encompasses the full spectrum from cultural, gender and religious diversity, to the diversity presented by individuals in disadvantaged aged categories, with physical and mental disabilities, and from immigrant backgrounds. Groups perceived as different are presented in the context of not only offenders and victims, but as service-providers.The book presents issues of difference in a balanced social and historical context. The authors represent an expansive and diverse group of leading educators, researchers, and criminal justice professionals. Together, they show readers how the power and the powerless form an essential framework for understanding the relationship between the criminal justice system and those members categorized as different. This book will help some, many for the first time, confront the consequences of difference, and the reality that someone else may have defined both the difference and the consequence. Readers will be shown how some categories carry privilege and responsibility, while other categories carry burden and/or rejection.For anyone interested in the criminal justice system with regard to diversity and multicultural issues.