Racial Threat, Concentrated Disadvantage and Social Control: Considering the Macro‐level Sources of Variation in Arrests*

Parker, Karen F.; Stults, Brian J.; Rice, Stephen K.

doi:10.1111/j.1745-9125.2005.00034.x

Cited by 184 publications

(188 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…These measures of economic well-being, or how they are changing, should be related to decreases in crime rates. A consistent finding in the literature is that places with higher average incomes have lower crime rates; this has been found at such varying geographic scales as blocks (Boessen and Hipp 2015), neighborhoods (Hipp 2007;Peterson, Krivo, and Harris 2000;Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997), cities (Beyerlein and Hipp 2005;Byrne 1986;McCall, Land, Dollar, and Parker 2013;Parker, Stults, and Rice 2005), and counties or MSAs (McVeigh 2006;Phillips 2006). However, the relationship between unemployment and crime is more uncertain, with some studies finding a negative relationship (Gibbs and Erickson 1976;Land, McCall, and Cohen 1990) and others finding a positive relationship (Beyerlein and Hipp 2005;Kposowa, Breault, and Harrison 1995;McCall, Land, Dollar, and Parker 2013).…”

supporting

confidence: 56%

Cities and the larger context: What explains changing levels of crime?

Hipp

Kane

2017

Journal of Criminal Justice

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This study explores whether the broader context in which a city is located impacts the change in crime levels over the subsequent decade. This study uses a wide range of cities (those with a population of at least 10,000), over a long period of time (from 1970 to 2010). We test and find that although cities with larger population and those surrounded by a county with a larger population typically experience larger increases in crime over the subsequent decade, cities experiencing an increase in population during the current decade experience crime decreases.The study finds that cities with higher average income experience greater subsequent crime decreases, and those surrounded by counties with larger unemployment increases experience crime increases. Higher levels of income inequality and racial/ethnic heterogeneity are associated with increasing crime rates, and increasing inequality and racial/ethnic heterogeneity in the surrounding county are associated with further increases. Furthermore, this relationship has strengthened since 1970, suggesting that both scales of inequality are even more important from a public safety perspective. Finally, we tested the time invariance of these relationships, and showed that the magnitude of the relationship between city-level inequality and increasing crime has increased over the study period.Keywords: cities, crime, longitudinal, inequality, racial/ethnic heterogeneity. Changing crime levels in cities BioJohn R. Hipp is a Professor in the departments of Criminology, Law and Society, and Sociology, at the University of California Irvine. His research interests focus on how neighborhoods change over time, how that change both affects and is affected by neighborhood crime, and the role networks and institutions play in that change. He approaches these questions using quantitative methods as well as social network analysis. He has published substantive work in such journals as an outcome measure -in the form of changes to the built environment, shifting patterns of employment, or the socioeconomic composition of places -and links these to drivers of change including policy, structural economic shifts, or preferences for how we use and travel across urban space. An important characteristic of existing macro-level studies is that they have almost never focused on how the broader metropolitan context in which cities are located might impact changes in crime. That is to say, the focus is often placed either on variation in crime across counties or MSAs, or variation in crime across a set of large cities -in both cases omitting the simultaneous relationship between a city's crime rate and the characteristics of both the city and the region in which it is situated. This suggests a needed area of research given that the larger context of a region, and how it is changing, likely has consequences for the level of crime in cities within that region.In raising the question of the relationship between socio-demographic characteristics and crime rates of cities, and how the larg...

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supporting

confidence: 56%

Cities and the larger context: What explains changing levels of crime?

Hipp

Kane

2017

Journal of Criminal Justice

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“…Such propositions have been widely tested in relation to pretrial release (Free 2004, Nagel 1983, sentencing (Bontrager, Bales and Chiricos 2005;Feldmeyer and Ulmer 2011;Jacobs and Carmichael 2002;Ruddell and Urbina 2004;Stolzenberg, D'Alessio and Eitle 2004;Wang 2012;Wang and Mears 2010), the size of police forces (Chamblin 1989;Stults and Baumer 2007), arrest (Chamlin and Liska 1992;Liska and Chamlin 1984;Parker, Stults and Rice 2005) and police use of deadly force (Liska and Yu 1992). Two studies on Louisiana voting patterns reveal a potential impact of changes in African-American populations on white voting patterns (Giles and Buckner 1998;Giles and Hertz 1994).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceal Carry and Race: A Test of Minority Threat Theory in Law Generation

Mullins¹,

Kavish²

2017

Preprint

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Conceal carry weapon (CCW) laws have generated a great deal of public discussion in the past decades, but little social science attention. Scholarly worked on the topic has been focused on finding potential effects of such laws on crime and victimization; little has attempted to explain the trends behind the adoption of the laws. This paper attempts to fill that gap by testing a series of hypotheses grounded in minority threat approaches. Our paper examines whether or not changes in the racial and ethnic composition of a county predict the voting outcome of Missouri's 1999 conceal-carry referendum. Findings fail to reject the null hypothesis and show the best predictor of the vote within a county was how that county voted in the 2000 Presidential election.

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“…Although common in social control research, such racial threat arguments often contain significant ambiguity (Liska 1987;Parker, et al 2005). For instance, Blalock (1967) argued that variation in the minority population will only be associated with higher levels of social control against that group up to a certain threshold, beyond which the size of the minority groups will make them likely to be a political force (for a discussion see D'Alessio et al 2002;Eitle et al 2002).…”

Section: Racial Threat and Social Control Against Blacksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, many studies include only a linear percent black variable (e.g. Cureton 2001;Jacobs 1979;Jacobs and Carmichael 2002;Parker et al 2005). Others include a squared term or the natural log transformation (Kent and Jacobs 2005;Ousey and Lee 2008;Sever 2001Sever , 2003.…”

Section: Racial Threat and Social Control Against Blacksmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Conditional Effects of Race and Politics on Social Control

Stucky

2011

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

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Numerous studies of the determinants of formal social control of Blacks focus on racial threat arguments, which contain implicit or explicit political elements. Using insights from research on politics and social control more generally, this article argues that the relationship between variation in the racial composition of a city and social control of minorities will be conditional on characteristics of the local political system. Hypotheses are tested using pooled cross-sectional time-series data on 100 large U.S. cities in 1970, 1980, and 1990. Contrary to expectations, Black violent crime arrest rates are curvilinearly negatively associated with larger percentages of Black residents. As predicted, the relationship between the percentage of Black residents and Black violent crime arrest rates is conditional on city political system characteristics (elected mayors, district council elections, and partisan ballots), the race of the mayor, and the percentage of city council members who are Black.

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Racial Threat, Concentrated Disadvantage and Social Control: Considering the Macro‐level Sources of Variation in Arrests*

Abstract: We would like to thank Graham Ousey and Ray Paternoster for comments and helpful suggestions on our research.

Cited by 184 publications

References 71 publications

Cities and the larger context: What explains changing levels of crime?

Cities and the larger context: What explains changing levels of crime?

Conceal Carry and Race: A Test of Minority Threat Theory in Law Generation

The Conditional Effects of Race and Politics on Social Control

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