Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Crime and Criminal Justice in the United States

Sampson, Robert J.; Lauritsen, Janet L.

doi:10.1086/449253

Cited by 367 publications

(268 citation statements)

References 97 publications

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“…It should not be surprising that, as the first roots of militarization originated from a response to race-related social crises, every "tough-on-crime" policy affected and continues to affect blacks more than any other racial or ethnic group in the US. By any metric, for instance by incarceration rates, arrest rates, or likelihood to be a victim of police misconduct, this racial disparity holds (Sampson and Lauritsen 1997;Tonry 1994;Western and Pettit 2005).…”

Section: Historical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Contextually, this suggests that drug enforcement is primarily a task for cities and towns, perhaps because municipal agencies have greater contact with larger portions of people, especially those who were most likely to be arrested for drug offenses. Empirically, drug enforcement has been most active against disadvantaged minorities, especially blacks (Bjerk 2007;Mosher 2011;Rojek, Rosenfeld, and Decker 2012;Sampson and Lauritsen 1997);In 1990, 83.8% of all black US citizens lived in cities, compared to 75.6% of all white US citizens (Census 2002). Relatedly, there was little change in either of these variables over the seventeen-year period.…”

Section: Final Model Analysis Of Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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From copper to steel: Police militarization at the end of the 20th century.

Baumgart¹

2016

Preprint

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By 2016, ongoing police shootings of unarmed black men had increased public awareness of policing processes; chief among those was militarization. Prior researchers explored this relatively new process, but very few had systematically analyzed it. In this paper, I conceptualize, operationalize, and describe police militarization across the United States. I transformed publicly available data, the Law Enforcement and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) dataset, into a panel of over 4,000 police departments over an eighteen-year period. I then constructed an index based on each of three dimensions of militarization: (1) increased stock of military equipment; (2) increased usage of paramilitary tactics; and (3) increased focus on military-style policing. I explain the indicators within each sub dimension, and describe their unique trend across time. Using both this Absolute LEMAS Militarization Index (ALMI) and a summary analysis of each indicator, I describe militarization between 1990 and 2007 using hierarchical linear modeling. Among key findings are three trends. First, I provide nationally representative evidence of an increasing trend in police militarization across most departments, despite statistical controls. I also found that larger departments were both more militarized and militarized faster over time than smaller departments. Finally, I found that diverse departments (either proportionately more women or more black officers) militarized at a slower rate over the period. This paper provides the theoretical and methodological basis for follow-up analyses of processes affecting militarization, including variations in crime control, organizational characteristics and racial dynamics.

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Section: Historical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Final Model Analysis Of Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From copper to steel: Police militarization at the end of the 20th century.

Baumgart¹

2016

Preprint

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“…Kleck (1981) analyzed the American research on racial bias in sentencing and showed that the studies that appeared to find racial discrimination usually failed to adequately control for criminal record and other explanatory factors. More recent studies have led some commentators to conclude that there is little evidence of overt racial bias in sentencing (Klein et al 1990, Sampson and Lauritsen 1997: 362, Warner 2000. This does not mean that racial discrimination has disappeared; rather that if it exists, it is more subtle and harder to observe (Daly and Tonry, 1997;Bushway and Piehl, 2001).…”

Section: Scientific Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Let My People Go: Ethnic In-Group Bias in Judicial Decisions - Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment

Gazal‐Ayal

Sulitzeanu‐Kenan

2009

SSRN Journal

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“…An even more common observation is that demography often serves as an important antecedent to crime. Several basic demographic features-age, sex, race and ethnicity, immigrant concentration, marriage, family structure, and residential mobility-have been linked to variation in criminal behavior among individuals (e.g., Greenberg 1985;Sampson and Laub 1993;Sampson and Lauritsen 1997;King, Massoglia, and Macmillan 2007) and differences in crime rates across time and space (e.g., Shaw and McKay 1942;Sampson and Groves 1989;Messner and Sampson 1991;Baumer 2008;Ousey and Kubrin 2009;Peterson, Krivo, and Hagan 2010). Finally, both involvement in crime and some of the core elements of demographic context (e.g., the distribution of people by income, race, and ethnicity) are often shaped by a common set of conditions, including enduring inequalities related to the distribution of resources, disparities in the application of government social controls, and significant cultural and economic shifts (Hirschman and Tolnay 2005;South and Messner 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%