When the issue of racial profiling by police departments came to light, it became a hot topic for criminology researchers. The conspicuous role of the American police touches a nerve, and often puts politics in the driver's seat of research in this area.

However, learning more about police operations is important from both a scientific and policy analytic standpoint as well. As the social and political environment changes and new investigative and prevention technologies appear, it is critical to understand the impact these external influences have on the efficiency, effectiveness...

Culture has returned to the poverty research agenda.

Over the past decade, sociologists, demographers, and even economists have begun asking questions about the role of culture in many aspects of poverty, at times even explaining the behavior of low-income populations in reference to cultural factors. Unlike their predecessors, contemporary researchers rarely claim that culture will sustain itself for multiple generations regardless of structural changes, and they almost never use the term pathology, which implied in an earlier era that people would cease to be poor if they changed...