Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T03:15:04.723Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

REASSESSING “TOWARD A THEORY OF RACE, CRIME, AND URBAN INEQUALITY”

Enduring and New Challenges in 21st Century America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2018

Robert J. Sampson*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Harvard University
William Julius Wilson
Affiliation:
Kennedy School, and Departments of Sociology and African and African American Studies, Harvard University
Hanna Katz
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Harvard University
*
*Corresponding author: Robert J. Sampson, Department of Sociology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

In “Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality,” Sampson and Wilson (1995) argued that racial disparities in violent crime are attributable in large part to the persistent structural disadvantages that are disproportionately concentrated in African American communities. They also argued that the ultimate causes of crime were similar for both Whites and Blacks, leading to what has been labeled the thesis of “racial invariance.” In light of the large scale social changes of the past two decades and the renewed political salience of race and crime in the United States, this paper reassesses and updates evidence evaluating the theory. In so doing, we clarify key concepts from the original thesis, delineate the proper context of validation, and address new challenges. Overall, we find that the accumulated empirical evidence provides broad but qualified support for the theoretical claims. We conclude by charting a dual path forward: an agenda for future research on the linkages between race and crime, and policy recommendations that align with the theory’s emphasis on neighborhood level structural forces but with causal space for cultural factors.

Type
Understanding Race, Crime, and Justice in The Twenty-First Century
Copyright
Copyright © Hutchins Center for African and African American Research 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, Elijah (2000). Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City. New York: Norton, W. W. and Company, Inc.Google Scholar
Baumer, Eric, Horney, Julie, Felson, Richard and Lauritsen, Janet L. (2003). Neighborhood Disadvantage and the Nature of Violence. Criminology, 41(1): 3972.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Browning, Christopher R., Feinberg, Seth L. and Dietz, Robert (2004). The Paradox of Social Organization: Networks, Collective Efficacy, and Violent Crime in Urban Neighborhoods. Social Forces, 83(2): 503534.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bursik, Robert J. (1988). Social Disorganization and Theories of Crime and Delinquency: Problems and Prospects. Criminology, 26(4): 519552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chamberlain, Alyssa T., and Hipp, John R. (2015). It’s All Relative: Concentrated Disadvantage Within and Across Neighborhoods and Communities, and the Consequences for Neighborhood Crime. Journal of Criminal Justice, 43(6): 431443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chetty, Raj, Hendren, Nathan, Jones, Maggie R., and Porter, Sonya R. (2018). Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective. Executive Summary. The Equality of Opportunity Project, Available at: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/documents/.Google Scholar
Cooper, Alexia, and Smith, Erica L. (2011). Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980–2008. Washington, DC: Office of Justice Programs U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.Google Scholar
Crutchfield, Robert D., Glusker, Ann, and Bridges, George S. (1999). A Tale of Three Cities: Labor Markets and Homicide. Sociological Focus, 32(1): 6583.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feldmeyer, Ben, Steffensmeier, Darrell, and Ulmer, Jeffery T. (2013). Racial/Ethnic Composition and Violence: Size-of-Place Variations in Percent Black and Percent Latino Effects on Violence Rates. Sociological Forum, 28(4): 811841.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Forman, James Jr. (2017). Locking up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Friedman, Samantha (2008). Do Declines in Residential Segregation Mean Stable Neighborhood Racial Integration in Metropolitan America? A Research Note. Social Science Research, 37(3): 920933.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagan, John, Shedd, Carla, and Payne, Monique (2005). Race, Ethnicity, and Youth Perceptions of Criminal Injustice. American Sociological Review, 70(3): 381407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Casey T., and Feldmeyer, Ben (2013). Latino Immigration and White, Black, and Latino Violent Crime: A Comparison of Traditional and Non-Traditional Immigrant Destinations. Social Science Research, 42(1): 202216.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hinton, Elizabeth (2016). From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hipp, John R., and Yates, Daniel (2011). Ghettos, Thresholds, and Crime: Does Concentrated Poverty Really Have an Accelerating Increasing Effect on Crime? Criminology, 49(4): 955990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsch, Arnold (1983). Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940–1960. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Isenberg, Nancy (2016). White Trash: The 400–Year Untold History of Class in America. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Johnson, Lallen T., and Kane, Robert J. (2016). Deserts of Disadvantage: The Diffuse Effects of Structural Disadvantage on Violence in Urban Communities. Crime and Delinquency:123.Google Scholar
Kirk, David S., and Papachristos, Andrew V. (2011). Cultural Mechanisms and the Persistence of Neighborhood Violence. American Journal of Sociology, 116(4): 11901233.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kornhauser, Ruth Rosner (1978). Social Sources of Delinquency: An Appraisal of Analytic Models. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Krivo, Lauren J., and Peterson, Ruth D. (1996). Extremely Disadvantaged Neighborhoods and Urban Crime. Social Forces, 75(2): 619648.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krivo, Lauren J., and Peterson, Ruth D. (2000). The Structural Context of Homicide: Accounting for Racial Differences in Process. American Sociological Review, 65(4): 547559.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krivo, Lauren J., Peterson, Ruth D., and Kuhl, Danielle C. (2009). Segregation, Racial Structure, and Neighborhood Violent Crime. American Journal of Sociology, 114(6): 17651802.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kubrin, Charis E., and Wadsworth, Tim (2003). Identifying the Structural Correlates of African-American Killings: What Can We Learn from Data Disaggregation? Homicide Studies, 7(1): 335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kubrin, Charis E., and Weitzer, Ronald (2003). Retaliatory Homicide: Concentrated Disadvantage and Neighborhood Culture. Social Problems, 50(2): 157180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Land, Kenneth, McCall, Patricia, and Cohen, Lawrence E. (1990). Structural Covariates of Homicide Rates: Are There Any Invariances across Time and Social Space? American Journal of Sociology, 95(4): 922963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laub, John H., and Sampson, Robert J. (2003). Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Laurence, James (2015). Community Disadvantage and Race-Specific Rates of Violent Crime: An Investigation into the “Racial Invariance” Hypothesis in the United Kingdom. Deviant Behavior, 36(12): 974995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lauritsen, Janet, Heimer, Karen, and Lang, Joseph B. (2018). The Enduring Significance of Race and Ethnic Disparities in Male Violent Victimization: An Analysis of NCVS Micro-Data, 1973–2010. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 15(1).Google Scholar
Lee, Matthew T. Jr. Martinez, Ramiro, and Rosenfeld, Richard B. (2001). Does Immigration Increase Homicide?: Negative Evidence from Three Border Cities. The Sociological Quarterly, 42(4): 559580.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieberson, Stanley, and Horwich, Joel (2008). Implication Analysis: A Pragmatic Proposal for Linking Theory and Data in the Social Sciences. Sociological Methodology, 38(1): 150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Light, Michael T., and Harris, Casey T. (2012). Race, Space, and Violence: Exploring Spatial Dependence in Structural Covariates of White and Black Violent Crime in U.S. Counties. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 28(4): 559586.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Light, Michael T., and Ulmer, Jeffery T. (2016). Explaining the Gaps in White, Black, and Hispanic Violence since 1990: Accounting for Immigration, Incarceration, and Inequality. American Sociological Review, 81(2): 290315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, Christopher J., Vélez, María B., and Santoro, Wayne A. (2013). Neighborhood Immigration, Violence, and City-Level Immigrant Political Opportunities. American Sociological Review, 78(4): 604632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacDonald, John, and Sampson, Robert J. (2012). The World in a City: Immigration and America’s Changing Social Fabric. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 641: 615.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martinez, Ramiro Jr. (2002). Latino Homicide: Immigration, Violence, and Community. New York: Routledge Press, Taylor and Francis Group.Google Scholar
Martinez, Ramiro Jr. (2003). Moving Beyond Black and White Violence: African American, Haitian and Latino Homicides in Miami. In Hawkins, Darnell F. (Ed.), Violent Crime, pp. 2243. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martinez, Ramiro Jr., and Nielsen, Amie L. (2006). Extending Ethnicity and Violence Research in a Multiethnic City: Haitian, African American, and Latino Nonlethal Violence. In Peterson, Ruth D., Krivo, Lauren J., and Hagan, John (Eds.), The Many Colors of Crime: Inequalities of Race, Ethnicity and Crime in America, pp. 108121 New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S. (1990). American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. American Journal of Sociology, 96(2): 329357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massey, Douglas S., Rothwell, Jonathan, and Domina, Thurston (2009). The Changing Bases of Segregation in the United States. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 626: 7490.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Matsueda, Ross L., Drakulich, Kevin, and Kubrin, Charis E. (2006). Race and Neighborhood Codes of Violence. In Peterson, Ruth D., Krivo, Lauren J., and Hagan, John (Eds.), The Many Colors of Crime: Inequalities of Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America, pp. 334356. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
McNulty, Thomas (2001). Assessing the Race-Violence Relationship at the Macro Level: The Assumption of Racial Invariance and the Problem of Restricted Distributions. Criminology, 39(2): 467490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mears, Daniel P., and Bhati, Avinash S. (2006). No Community Is an Island: The Effects of Resource Deprivation on Urban Violence in Spatially and Socially Proximate Communities. Criminology, 44(3): 509548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morenoff, Jeffrey D., Sampson, Robert J., and Raudenbush, Stephen (2001). Neighborhood Inequality, Collective Efficacy, and the Spatial Dynamics of Urban Violence. Criminology, 39(3): 517560.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muhammad, Khalil Gibran (2011). The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.Google Scholar
Ousey, Graham C. (1999). Homicide, Structural Factors, and the Racial Invariance Assumption. Criminology, 37(2): 405425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pager, Devah, and Shepherd, Hana (2008). The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment, Housing, Credit, and Consumer Markets. Annual Review of Sociology, 34: 181209.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Papachristos, Andrew V., Hureau, David M., and Braga, Anthony A. (2013). The Corner and the Crew: The Influence of Geography and Social Networks on Gang Violence. American Sociological Review, 78(3): 417447.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, Orlando (2015). The Nature and Dynamics of Cultural Processes. In Patterson, Orlando and Fosse, Nathan (Eds.), The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, pp. 2544. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pattillo, Mary E. (1998). Sweet Mothers and Gangbangers: Managing Crime in a Black Middle-Class Neighborhood. Social Forces, 76(3): 747774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perkins, Kristin L., and Sampson, Robert J. (2015). Compounded Deprivation in the Transition to Adulthood: The Intersection of Racial and Economic Inequality among Chicagoans, 1995–2013. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 1(1): 3554.Google Scholar
Peterson, Ruth D., and Krivo, Lauren J. (2005). Macrostructural Analyses of Race, Ethnicity, and Violent Crime: Recent Lessons and New Directions for Research. Annual Review of Sociology, 31: 331356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, Ruth D., and Krivo, Lauren J. (2009). Segregated Spatial Locations, Race-Ethnic Composition, and Neighborhood Violent Crime. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 623: 93107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, Ruth D., and Krivo, Lauren J. (2010a). Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial Divide. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Peterson, Ruth D., and Krivo, Lauren J. (2010b). National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS), 2000. ICPSR27501–v1. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. <https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR27501.v1> (accessed November, 2017).>CrossRef+(accessed+November,+2017).>Google Scholar
Peterson, Ruth D., Krivo, Lauren J., and Harris, M. A. (2000). Disadvantage and Neighborhood Violent Crime: Do Local Institutions Matter? Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 37(1): 3163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, Julie A. (2002). White, Black, and Latino Homicide Rates: Why the Difference?” Social Problems, 49(3): 349373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piketty, Thomas (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pratt, Travis, and Cullen, Frances (2005). Assessing Macro-Level Predictors and Theories of Crime: A Meta-Analysis. Crime and Justice, 32: 373450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenfeld, Richard (2016). Documenting and Explaining the 2015 Homicide Rise: Research Directions. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.Google Scholar
Sampson, Robert J. (2012). Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Robert J. (2013). The Place of Context: A Theory and Strategy for Criminology’s Hard Problems (2012 Presidential Address to the American Society of Criminology). Criminology, 51(1): 131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Robert J. (2015a). Continuity and Change in Neighborhood Culture: Toward a Structurally Embedded Theory of Social Altruism and Moral Cynicism. In Patterson, Orlando and Fosse, Nathan (Eds.), The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth, pp. 201228. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Sampson, Robert J. (2015b). Immigration and America’s Urban Revival. American Prospect, Summer: 2024.Google Scholar
Sampson, Robert J. (2016). Individual and Community Economic Mobility in the Great Recession Era: The Spatial Foundations of Persistent Inequality. In Economic Mobility: Research and Ideas on Strengthening Families, Communities and the Economy, pp. 261287. St. Louis, MO: Federal Reserve Bank.Google Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., and Bartusch, Dawn Jeglum (1998). Legal Cynicism and (Subcultural?) Tolerance of Deviance: The Neighborhood Context of Racial Differences. Law and Society Review, 32(4): 777804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., and Byron Groves, W. (1989). Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social-Disorganization Theory. American Journal of Sociology, 94(4): 774802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., Morenoff, Jeffrey D., and Raudenbush, Stephen W. (2005). Social Anatomy of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Violence. American Journal of Public Health, 95(2): 224232.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sampson, Robert J., Raudenbush, Stephen W., and Earls, Felton (1997). Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy. Science, 277(5328): 918924.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sampson, Robert J., and Wilson, William Julius (1995). Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality. In Hagan, John and Peterson, Ruth D. (Eds.), Crime and Inequality, pp. 3756. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sharkey, Patrick T. (2013). Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Equality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharkey, Patrick T. (2018). Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Revival of City Life, and the Next War on Violence. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Shaw, Clifford R., and McKay, Henry D. (1949). Rejoinder. American Sociological Review, 14(5): 608617.Google Scholar
Shaw, Clifford R., and McKay, Henry D. (1969 [1942]). Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Shihadeh, Edward S., and Ousey, Graham C. (1998). Industrial Restructuring and Violence: The Link between Entry-Level Jobs, Economic Deprivation, and Black and White Homicide. Social Forces, 77(1): 185206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shihadeh, Edward S., and Shrum, Wesley (2004). Serious Crime in Urban Neighborhoods: Is There a Race Effect? Sociological Spectrum, 24(4): 507533.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Small, Mario Luis, Harding, David J., and Lamont, Michele (2010). Reconsidering Culture and Poverty. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 629: 627.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Sandra Susan (2010). Race and Trust. Annual Review of Sociology, 36: 453–375.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steffensmeier, Darrell, Ulmer, Jeffrey T., Feldmeyer, Ben, and Harris, Casey T. (2010). Scope and Conceptual Issues in Testing the Race-Crime Invariance Thesis: Black, White, and Hispanic Comparisons. Criminology, 48(4): 11331169.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sugrue, Thomas (1996). The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post-War Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Travis, Jeremy, Western, Bruce, and Redburn, Steve (Eds.). (2014). The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.Google Scholar
Unnever, James D. (2018). The Racial Invariance Thesis in Criminology: Toward a Black Criminology. In Unnever, James D., Gabbidon, Shaun L., and Chouhy, Cecilia (Eds.), Building a Black Criminology: Race, Theory, and Crime. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Unnever, James D., Barnes, J. C., and Cullen, Francis T. (2016). The Racial Invariance Thesis Revisited: Testing an African American Theory of Offending. Journal of Contemporary. Criminal Justice, 32(1): 726.Google Scholar
Vance, J. D. (2016). Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. New York, NY: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Vélez, María B. (2006). Toward an Understanding of the Lower Rates of Homicide in Latino Versus Black Neighborhoods: A Look at Chicago. In Peterson, Ruth D., Krivo, Lauren J., and Hagan, John (Eds.), The Many Colors of Crime: Inequalities of Race, Ethnicity and Crime in America, pp. 91107. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Vélez, María B, Krivo, Lauren J., and Peterson, Ruth D.. (2003). Structural Inequality and Homicide: An Assessment of the Black-White Gap in Killings. Criminology, 41(3): 645672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vélez, María B., Lyons, Christopher J., and Santoro, Wayne A. (2015). The Political Context of the Percent Black-Neighborhood Violence Link: A Multilevel Analysis. Social Problems, 62(1): 93119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, William Julius (2009). More Than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.Google Scholar
Wilson, William Julius ([1987] 2012). The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, William Julius (2018). Don’t Ignore Class When Addressing Racial Gaps in Intergenerational Mobility. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2018/04/12/dont-ignore-class-when-addressing-racial-gaps-in-intergenerational-mobility/.Google Scholar
Wooldredge, John, and Thistlethwaite, Amy B. (2003). Neighborhood Structure and Race-Specific Rates of Intimate Assault. Criminology, 41(2): 393422.CrossRefGoogle Scholar