Criminal Justice Scholar Dispels Racial Stereotypes: Each semester, Dr. Shaun Gabbidon teaches a course on race and crime at Penn State Harrisburg, where he is a Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice.
His objective: change perceptions.
“I ask who commits the most crime and inevitably they say Blacks commit the most crime,” he says. “Then I spend a whole semester getting them to understand the reality. We get into crack cocaine laws, powder cocaine laws, the prison industrial complex and everything from law creation to policing to what happens in court systems.”
Gabbidon, 42, is widely regarded as one of the nation’s top scholars on race and crime. In nearly 15 years in the academy, he has amassed a vast body of work on the subject. He is the author, co-author or editor of more than a dozen books and has written scores of articles for scholarly journals. He has received numerous honors.
