The co-offender as counterfactual: a quasi-experimental within-partnership approach to the examination of the relationship between race and arrest

Abstract

Objectives Estimate the relationship between race and arrest within co-offending partnerships using a quasi-experimental framework. More specifically, this study argues that when two offenders commit an offense together (i.e., co-offend), the characteristics of the offense and victim are the same and can be removed as possible confounding variables. In this way, co-offenders can serve as counterfactual observations to one another, allowing for quasi-experimental analysis of the effects of race on arrest likelihood. Methods The current study restructures data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) into a multi-level format wherein level-1 information on offender demographics and arrest are nested within a level-2 file containing information on co-offending partnerships, offense characteristics, and victim characteristics. By restricting the data to co-offending partnerships and examining within-partnership differences in arrest, the analysis examines racial differences in arrest given that two offenders commit the same offense together against the exact same victim. Results While a traditional logistic regression approach suggests that black offenders are less likely than white offenders to be arrested (OR = 0.749), the quasi-experimental analysis examining within-partnership differences suggests the opposite: black offenders are more likely than their white co-offending partners to be arrested for an offense (OR = 1.031). Conclusions These results have two implications. First, traditional regression analyses of the relationship between race and arrest may be subject to significant selection and omitted variable bias. Second, there is potential racial disparity in co-offender arrest:

Co-Offending and Arrest: An Examination of the “Group Hazard” Hypothesis

“…Unfortunately, the literature on co-offender characteristics and arrest risk is very limited. Regarding gender, Ouellet et al (2013) examined co-offending participations and found that men were more likely than women to be re-arrested (see also, Lantz & Wenger, 2019). Similarly, Fergusson, Swain-Campbell, and Horwood (2002) found that males were significantly more likely than females to be arrested.…”

“…Turning to race, scholars have long argued that Black offenders are more likely than White offenders to be arrested, controlling for criminal behavior (Kochel et al, 2011; Lantz & Wenger, 2019). There are a number of explanations for this relationship, ranging from disproportionate patrol practices (e.g., Mann, 1993) to suspect demeanor (Worden & Shepard, 1994), to racial bias (Anderson, 1990).…”

On the Validity of Arrest as a Proxy for Offense: Race and the Likelihood of Arrest for Violent Crimes

“…Through survival analysis modeling, Roberts and Lyons [99] found that murder/non-negligent manslaughter incidents with non-White offenders were more likely to result in an arrest. Lastly, in a recent analysis of violent offenses of 2003-2012 NIBRS data including crimes committed by multiple offenders, Lantz and Wenger [78] found that incidents were less likely to result in arrests when the offender was Black. However, when they restricted to incidents where Black and White individuals offended together, they found that Black offenders were slightly more likely to be arrested.…”

“…Our study of violent offenses on NIBRS is closely related to that of D'Alessio and Stolzenberg [25], but our analysis is much larger scale, includes incidents of murder/non-negligent manslaughter, and, unlike theirs, does not rely on the (unrealistic) assumption that the regression model is well-specified. Unlike Lantz and Wenger [78], we focus specifically on geographical variations in the likelihood of arrest and on the issue of model misspecification. We find that the sign of the offender race coefficient varies with the subset of crimes used in the analysis, which suggests that the conclusions of prior work are dependent on model specification.…”

Racial Differences in Co-Offending: Correlations With Concurrent Juvenile Police Contacts and Predictions of Future Adult Police Contacts

“…One demographic variable that has received only passing attention in the research literature on co-offending is race or ethnic status. In one of the few studies to address the effect of race on co-offending, Lantz and Wenger (2020) discovered that black co-offenders were more likely to be arrested for their actions than their white co-offending counterparts. Results from a second study showed that co-offending was more common in racially homogeneous groups than in racially heterogeneous groups (Schaefer et al, 2014).…”