Structural Disadvantage and American Indian Homicide and Robbery Offending

Abstract

This article contributes conceptually and empirically to research on American Indian violence. Conceptually, this study extends research on race differences in crime by outlining competing perspectives on the relationship between structural disadvantage and American Indian violence. Empirically, 1995-2005 California arrest data are used to extend macro-level analyses of American Indian violence, most notably by using offending instead of victimization data. Findings reveal that structural disadvantage is associated with increases in American Indian homicide and robbery offending. This suggests that macrosocial criminological theories are applicable to the study of American Indian violent offending as they are for other racial and ethnic groups.

Twenty-First Century Trends in Girls’ Violence and the Gender Gap: Triangulated Findings from Official and Unofficial Longitudinal Sources

“…The UCR has been publishing annual Crime in the United States reports since the 1930s, with certain tables showing the number of arrests by sex, as well as age and race, for 30 offenses including homicide, aggravated assault, and simple assault. Scholars have raised measurement concerns with these statistics, however, due to unreported law violations (the “dark figure of crime”), and vulnerability to policy shifts and enforcement practices (Feldmeyer, 2007; Lu, 2018; Painter-Davis, 2012). Another comparatively under-studied distortion is that the summary UCR offense categories are broad and derive from a heterogeneous collection of criminal acts, making it difficult to establish the nature of the illegalities that typically distinguish one category from another (e.g., disorderly conduct vs. simple assault vs. aggravated assault) (Steffensmeier and Allan 1996).…”