Law Professor David V. Baker has referenced Urbina’s work as “research of the highest caliber.” Professor Adalberto Aguirre, a sociologist at the University of California—Riverside, has cited Urbina’s work as “cutting-edged research.” On October 2013, Dr. David E. Barlow, Professor and Dean at Fayetteville State University, wrote “Dr. Urbina is a highly skilled researcher on Latinos and criminal justice.”
For instance, Urbina’s death penalty book, Capital Punishment and Latino Offenders (2003, 2011), was quoted by the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy as: “Capital Punishment and Latino Offenders is unquestionably valuable to policymakers … the book is an indispensable read.” Professor Baker writes: “I have just finished reading Capital Punishment and Latino Offenders . . . excellent scholarship!” Criminal Justice Review quoted Urbina’s death penalty book as “compelling.”
Professor Donna M. Bishop (Northeastern University) referenced Urbina’s 2004 co-authored publication in Justice Quarterly as “a very solid contribution to the literature.” Rutgers University Press released an edited volume by Professor Mary Bosworth of Oxford University. The book (Race, Gender, and Punishment: From Colonialism to the War on Terror), which contains a chapter by Dr. Urbina, was quoted by Professor Susan L. Miller (University of Delaware) as “A superb book on the treatment of race, gender and punishment,” and Claire Renzetti of the University of Dayton notes: “This volume stands as first-rate evidence that the sociological imagination is alive and well.”
A 2007 publication by Urbina, which appeared in Critical Criminology: An International Journal, has been quoted by Professor Paul Leighton, a critical criminologist at Eastern Michigan University, as “one of the most significant contributions to the field of knowledge,” citing the manuscript as a future “standard citation” in criminal justice literature. In a 2008 publication by Professor Matthew B. Robinson (Death Nation: The Experts Explain American Capital Punishment), Urbina was recognized as a nationally leading authority in the area of capital punishment.
His book on women in prison, A Comprehensive Study of Female Offenders: Life Before, During, and After Incarceration (2008), was quoted as:
“Martin Guevara Urbina provides a comprehensive examination of the plight of women prisoners – the fastest growing group of U.S. jail and prison inmates. Drawing upon self-report research conducted in Wisconsin prisons, this book provides an in-depth account of women’s lives on the street, behind bars, and perceptions about their prospects for the future. Urbina disentangles the complicated relationships between a punitive criminal justice system and race, class, and gender. Altogether, this well-written and researched book sheds considerable light on a prison population that is often considered invisible and forgotten. This book will appeal to students of criminology and criminal justice, as well as those interested in better understanding how poor and disadvantaged women become caught up in economic, political, cultural, and social forces beyond their control.” —Rick Ruddell, Law Foundation of Saskatchewan Chair in Police Studies, Department of Justice Studies, University of Regina (Canada)
Urbina’s second book on capital punishment, Capital Punishment in America: Race and the Death Penalty Over Time (2012), was quoted as:
“Death penalty literature has been copious over the past half century. Yet Urbina offers a major new perspective on the issue, assessing the role of the Latino/a community in death penalty decisions and in major crime involvement generally. Among most scholars, it is a settled matter that death penalty decisions are disproportionately more frequent for African Americans and now, as demonstrated convincingly here, Latinos. But why? Death penalty advocates argue enthusiastically that disproportionality occurs because certain races unequally commit crimes for which the death penalty exists. This misses critical facts, argues Urbina. Urbina provides extensive statistical, referential, and descriptive evidence to buttress his thesis.” —December 2012 issue of CHOICE
His book Hispanics in the U.S. Criminal Justice System: The New American Demography (2012), which includes 5-chapter-sections for each of the three major components of the criminal justice system (i.e., law enforcement, judicial system, and penal system), was characterized as:
“Dr. Urbina’s text provides the reader an extremely detailed account of how Latino/Latinas have been targeted, misidentified, and categorized to the extent that a large segment of society within the United States views them as a group of criminals and freeloaders . . . For lower- and upper-level courses that deal with critically analyzing the criminal justice from an ethnic perspective would greatly benefit from adopting this text. Further courses within Sociology and Criminology/Criminal Justice programs that expand their instruction to areas that deal with macro-analytical discussions on the administration of justice would also see this textbook as quite useful.” —Jack Monell, Race and Justice, 2013
Regarding Urbina’s book on multiculturalism (2014), Historian Arnoldo De León wrote (September 7, 2014):
“I have just finished looking through Twenty-First Century Dynamics of Multiculturalism: Beyond Post-Racial America. What a marvelous contribution it is to Mexican American Studies. And it is an outstanding collection of authors: Almost a “who’s who.” I am very pleased with the outcome and will publicize the work.”