Race and Imprisonments: Vigilante Violence, Minority Threat, and Racial Politics

Abstract

The effects of lynchings on criminal justice outcomes have seldom been examined. Recent findings also are inconsistent about the effects of race on imprisonments. This study uses a pooled time-series design to assess lynching and racial threat effects on state imprisonments from 1972 to 2000. After controlling for Republican strength, conservatism, and other factors, lynch rates explain the growth in admission rates. The findings also show that increases in black residents produce subsequent expansions in imprisonments that likely are attributable to white reactions to this purported menace. But after the percentage of blacks reaches a substantial threshold—and the potential black vote becomes large enough to begin to reduce these harsh punishments—reductions in prison admissions occur. These results also confirm a political version of racial threat theory by indicating that increased Republican political strength produces additional imprisonments.

Retracted: A Legacy of Lynchings: Perceived Black Criminal Threat Among Whites

“…Hypothesis 2b extends this line of reasoning and draws on literature that finds that political conservatives may be more likely to endorse punitive views grounded in opposition to or fear of blacks (Chiricos et al ; Fullerton and Dixon ; Jacobs et al ; King ; McCorkle ). Specifically, conservatives are more likely to campaign on law‐and‐order platforms and support punitive policies that disproportionately affect blacks and other minorities (Beckett ; Davey ; Jacobs and Helms ; McVeigh et al ; Stucky et al ).…”

“…Research on lynchings has emphasized the salience of lynchings for exemplifying and supporting a culture of racial animus and hostility toward blacks that exerts a persisting influence on race relations in contemporary America (DeFina and Hannon ; Durso and Jacobs ; Jacobs et al , ; King et al ; Messner et al ; Porter ; Porter et al ; Smângs ; Stewart et al ). Many studies in this tradition highlight the salience of racial threat for explaining how the racial animus exemplified by lynchings contributes to modern‐day whites' views about and reactions to blacks.…”

“…Some studies have directly linked the policies to lynchings. Jacobs et al (: 170), for example, have written that “the intense anti‐Black fervor exemplified by [lynchings] may persist in sufficient strength to influence contemporary legal punishments.” Similarly, King et al (: 293) have argued that the “symbolic and cultural framework surrounding lynching” can help to explain current sanctioning policies and practices. Support for this argument can be found in an emerging and diverse body of research that has found a positive association between past lynchings and contemporary capital punishment, prison admissions, noncompliance with federal hate crime law, violence toward blacks, and white supremacist group activity (DeFina and Hannon ; Durso and Jacobs ; Jacobs et al , ; King et al ; Messner et al ; Petersen and Ward ; Porter ; Porter et al ).…”

“…It suggests that lynchings have contributed to views among whites that blacks present a potent criminal threat to society and, beyond that, a criminal threat specifically to whites (see, e.g., Durso and Jacobs ; King et al ; Stewart et al ). Not least, scholarship on lynchings and racial threat underscores the potential for threat mechanisms to be amplified by social context (see, generally, DeFina and Hannon ; Gabriel and Tolnay ; Jackson ; Jacobs et al ; Mears et al ; Welch et al ).…”

Memorializing Lynch Victims

“…An average of one black man, woman, or child was lynched each week in the American South between 1882 and 1930 (Tolnay and Beck 1995), preventing black geographic mobility and constraining black economic advancement (Ransom and Sutch 2001). The geographic concentration of historical racial violence is linked to contemporary issues, including interracial homicide (Messner, Baller, and Zevenbergen 2005), state use of the death penalty (Jacobs, Carmichael, and Kent 2005), and incarceration rates (Jacobs, Malone, and Iles 2012).…”