Shopping While Black: Consumer Racial Profiling in America

Winner of the 2022 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Outstanding Book Award!

Shopping While Black: Consumer Racial Profiling in America lays out the results of nearly two decades of research on racial profiling in retail settings.

Gabbidon and Higgins address the generally neglected racial profiling that occurs in retail settings. Although there is no existing national database on shoplifting or consumer racial profiling (CRP) from which to study the problem, they survey relevant legal cases and available data sources. This problem clearly affects a large number of racial/ethnic minorities, and causes real harm to the victims, such as the emotional trauma attached to being excessively monitored in stores and, in the worst-case scenarios, falsely accused of shoplifting. Their analysis is informed by their own experience: one co-author is a former security executive for a large retailer, and both are Black men who understand firsthand the sting of being profiled because of their color. After providing an overview of the history of CRP and the official and unofficial data sources and criminological literature on this topic, they address public opinion polls, as well as the extent and impact of victimization. They also provide a review of CRP litigation, provide recommendations for retailers to reduce racial profiling, and also chart some directions for future research.

This book is appropriate for researchers as well as advanced undergraduates and graduate students in Criminology, Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, Sociology, Security Studies, and Law programs, and will be of interest to the general reader.

Shaun L. Gabbidon is a distinguished professor in criminal justice at Penn State Harrisburg. He is a graduate in PhD in criminology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He has served as a fellow at Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research and has taught at the Center for African American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gabbidon was recently named a fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. He has authored more than 100 scholarly publications including 13 books and 70 peer-reviewed articles, his most recent books include the fifth edition of the co-authored text Race and Crime (2019; SAGE) and the co-edited book Building a Black Criminology: Race, Theory, and Crime (2019; Routledge). He currently serves as the editor of the Journal of Criminal Justice Education. Prior to entering academe, Dr. Gabbidon worked as a security executive for a major retailer. In recent years, he has served as an expert witness in consumer racial profiling cases and as an anti-racial profiling consultant. Dr. Gabbidon can be reached at slg13@psu.edu.

George E. Higgins is professor in the department of criminal justice at the University of Louisville. He received his PhD in criminology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2001. Dr. Higgins is the recipient of numerous international, national, and regional awards for his scholarship and research, teaching, leadership, and service. He is the author of more than 200 scholarly publications including 200 peer-reviewed articles, and 9 books. His most recent publications appear or are forthcoming in Journal of Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Justice Quarterly, Deviant Behavior, and Youth and Society.