Abstract
Friends and colleagues, authors and reviewers, it has been my honor these past years to serve the community and the journal Race and Justice (RAJ). Although my name has been the one appearing in the journal, I have always considered myself more -an administrator, here to facilitate the process. You are the ones who do the substantive work. Your manuscripts, your reviews, your downloads, and your citations—these are what make RAJ succeed.
I want to offer special thanks to my associate editors. Drs. Rod Brunson, Anthony Peguero, Kareem Jordan, Eric Stewart, and Marjorie Zatz have been with the journal or with me from the beginning. My after-hours and weekend text messages asking for advice and assistance never went unanswered.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Ruth Peterson as a mentor and advisor as I have navigated my own personal and professional place in the study of race and the criminal legal system. Ruth has always made me feel welcome even when I have doubted myself.
A doctoral student posed a question the other day during a class discussion of some of the most frustrating aspects of the criminal law and its enforcement. She asked, “What is justice?” Such a simple and yet profoundly unanswerable query. What is justice, really? What does it look like for victims, defendants, prisoners, communities? Does the “justice” system merely dispense a series of distasteful compromises that leave all parties feeling dissatisfied, unheard, and mistreated? Even if the cogs of the justice system did churn in perfect unison, larger questions would always remain about the morality of punishment, the types and amount of punishment that are “right” for any given offense, and the purposes criminalization and punishment serve in society. So, what is justice? I’m honestly not sure. But I have faith that my colleagues in the discipline will continue pursuing answers and bringing us ever closer to the fairness, equality, respect, and safety everyone deserves.
Starting this issue, Dr. Deena Isom takes the helm. I am pleased and comforted to know that the journal I have grown so fond of will be in her capable hands. I can’t wait to see what she accomplishes with her editorial team and everyone else helping along the way.
I am not leaving the editorial scene. Soon I will be transitioning into the role of co-editor-in-chief (with Dr. Ojmarrh Mitchell of the University of California, Irvine) at Criminology & Public Policy. I hope to work with many of you as authors, reviewers, and readers at that journal.
So, with both sadness to leave and excitement for the future, I wish you all a fond farewell and a very, very Happy New Year!
In Solidarity,
Jacinta
Former Editor-in-Chief, Race and Justice: An International Journal