Gender, Race, and Authorship in Criminological and Criminal Justice Journals: A New Look With an Old Result

Abstract

There is a wealth of research that has tested faculty productivity in criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) journals over the past 30 years, although only a modest proportion of these studies have analyzed the gender of authors publishing in CCJ journals. Moreover, only a couple of studies have assessed the race of the authors in these journals, with their focus placed on either African American productivity or the comparison of non-White and White authors. The present study examines 1,836 journal articles in 14 journals from 2016 to 2018, including the top eight CCJ journals, the top three sociology and psychology journals, and the top three gender-focused journals in the area of crime and justice. We broke author productivity in these journals down by specific demographic categories and found that White men account for the majority of authors publishing in the CCJ journals, followed by White women. We also found that the advances for women authors found in some journals are primarily due to White women authors, as the production of all minority groups in the journals remains low regardless of gender.