11:11 a.m., Oct. 7, 2009----The University of Delaware Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice's annual Minority Mentor Lecture Series will feature Geoff Ward, assistant professor at the University of California at Irvine, on Thursday, Oct. 8, from 3:30-5 p.m. in 102 Colburn Lab.

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Ward will present “Beyond Redistribution: The Deliberative Dynamics of Racial Justice in Criminal Social Control.”

An abstract of the talk follows:

The problem of racial inequality in legal and law enforcement contexts is commonly framed as an issue of redistribution, where racial justice is defined as the insignificance of race to distributions of benefits and burdens (i.e., equal protection, police violence, incarceration).

However, as political theorists stress, race-based social injustices are not merely distributive in nature, but rather, also involve central questions of “recognition,” that is, of equal standing and voice in cultural-valuational fields of society, and ultimately, societal power relations.

In this talk, Ward will discuss the tensions and connections between distributive and deliberative conceptions of racial justice and how his research in various contexts of justice administration (a) examines these more explicitly political dynamics on racial justice; and (b) informs an ideal of racially democratic social control.

Ward's research specializations include race relations, courts and sentencing, juvenile justice, and social movements.