Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T13:59:03.196Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mobilizing Law in Urban Areas: The Social Structure of Homicide Clearance Rates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Marian J. Borg  and
Karen F. Parker
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This research explores the utility of Black's theory of law for explaining differences in homicide clearance rates across large cities in the United States. Using insights from the social disorganization literature, we develop and evaluate hypotheses regarding homicide clearance rates and aggregate measures of stratification, morphology, culture, organization, and alternative social control. Our findings support the argument that the rate of clearing homicide cases varies according to the social characteristics of the location where they occur. In particular, clearance rates were highest in cities marked by greater racial disparities in education, income, employment, and residence; greater residential stability; higher levels of educational attainment; higher expenditures for educational programs; and lower rates of homicide. We discuss the implications of our analysis for both the social disorganization literature and Black's theory, and we suggest directions for further inquiry into the relationship between structural conditions in urban areas and homicide clearance rates.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , 2001 , pp. 435 - 466
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

The contributions of the authors are equal in this research.

References

Anderson, Elijah (1990) Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldus, David C., & Woodworth, George G. (1998) “Race Discrimination and the Death Penalty: An Empirical and Legal Overview,” in America's Experiment with Capital Punishment, J. R. Acker, R. M. Bohm, C. S. Lanier, eds. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.Google Scholar
Baldus, David C., Woodworth, George G. & Pulaski, Charles A. Jr. (1990) Equal Justice and the Death Penalty: A Legal and Empirical Analysis. Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, M. P. (1988) The Moral Order of a Suburb. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Bayley, David H. (1994) Police for the Future. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belsley, David A., Kuh, Edwin & Welsch, Roy E. (1980) Regression Diagnostics: Identifying Influential Data and Sources of Collinearity. New York: John Wiley & Sons.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Donald (1970) “Production of Crime Rates,” 35 American Sociological Rev. 733–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Donald (1976) The Behavior of Law. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Black, Donald (1980) The Manners and Customs of the Police. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Black, Donald (1993) The Social Structure of Right and Wrong. San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Black, Donald (1995) “The Epistemology of Pure Sociology,” 20 Law & Social Inquiry 829–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blau, Judith, & Blau, Peter M. (1982) “The Cost of Inequality: Metropolitan Structure and Violent Crime,” 47 American Sociological Rev. 114–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Block, Carolyn Rebecca (1986) Homicide in Chicago: Aggregate and Time Series Perspectives on Victim, Offender, and Circumstances (1965–1981). Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Borg, Marian J. (1998) “The Effect of Vicarious Homicide Victimization on Support for Capital Punishment: A Test of Black's Theory of Law,” 36 Criminology 537–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borg, Marian J. (1999) “Using Violence as Social Control: Applying a Theory of Conflict Management to Juvenile Disputes,” 10 Univ. of Florida J. of Law & Public Policy 313–39.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, John, & Biles, David (1980) “Empirical Verification and Black's The Behavior of Law,” 45 American Sociological Rev. 334–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Don W. (1978) “Arrest Rates and Crime Rates: When Does a Tipping Effect Occur?” 57 Social Forces 671–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bursik, Robert J. (1988) “Social Disorganization and Theories of Crime and Delinquency: Problems and Prospects,” 26 Criminology 519–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bursik, Robert J., & Grasmick, Harold G. (1993) Neighborhoods and Crime: The Dimensions of Effective Community Control. New York: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Campbell, J. P. (1977) “On the Nature of Organizational Effectiveness,” in New Perspectives on Organizational Effectiveness, P. S. Goodman & J. M. Pennings, eds. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Google Scholar
Canada, Geoffrey (1995) Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Chamlin, Mitchell B. (1989) “A macro Social Analysis of the Change in Robbery and Homicide Rates: Controlling for Static and Dynamic Effects,” 22 Sociological Focus 275–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cloninger, Dale O., & Sartorius, Lester C. (1979) “Crime Rates, Clearance Rates, and Enforcement Effort,” 38 American J. of Economics & Sociology 389–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, Philip J. (1979) “The Clearance Rate as a Measure of Criminal Justice Effectiveness,” 11 J. of Public Economics 135–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooney, Mark (1994) “Evidence as Partisanship,” 28 Law & Society Rev. 833–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooney, Mark (1997) “The Decline of Elite Homicide,” 35 Criminology 381–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooney, Mark (1998) Warriors and Peacemakers: How Third Parties Shape Violence. New York: New York Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Crutchfield, Robert D., Geerken, Michael R. & Grove, Walter R. (1982) “Crime Rates and Social Integration,” 20 Criminology 467–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doyle, Daniel P., & Luckenbill, David F. (1991) “Mobilizing Law in Response to Collective Problems: A Test of Black's Theory of Law,” 25 Law & Society Rev. 103–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (1997) Crime in the United States, 1996. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Feeley, Malcolm M. (1979) The Process Is the Punishment: Handling Cases in a Lower Criminal Court. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Fisher, J. C., & Mason, R. L. (1981) “The Analysis of Multicollinear Data in Criminology,” in Methods in Quantitative Criminology, Fox, J. A., ed. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Fox, James Alan (1996) “Uniform Crime Reports [United States]: Supplementary Homicide Reports, 1976–1994.” (Computer file). ICPSR 6754. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (distributor).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garofalo, James, & McLeod, Maureen (1989) “The Structure and Operations of Neighborhood Watch Programs in the United States,” 35 Crime & Delinquency 326–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, R. A. (1967) “Issues in Multiple Regression,” 78 American J. of Sociology 592–616.Google Scholar
Gottfredson, Michael, & Hindelang, Michael (1979) “A Study of the Behavior of Law.” 44 American Sociological Rev. 3–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, David F. (1983) “Donald Black's Sociology of Law: A Critique,” 17 Law & Society Rev. 337–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, David F., & Kessler, Ronald C. (1982) “The Effect of Arrests on Crime: A Multivariate Panel Analyses,” 60 Social Forces 771–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartnett, Susan M., & Skogan, Wesley G. (1999) “Community Policing: Chicago's Experience,” National Institute of Justice J., April, pp. 2–11.Google Scholar
Hembroff, Larry A. (1987) “The Seriousness of Acts and Social Contexts: A Test of Black's Theory of the Behavior of Law,” 93 American J. of Sociology 322.Google Scholar
Horwitz, Allan (1990) The Logic of Social Control. New York: Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, David, & Helms, Ronald E. (1996) “Toward a Political Model of Incarceration: A Time-Series Examination of Multiple Explanations for Prison Admission Rates,” 102 American J. of Sociology 323–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kornhauser, Ruth (1978) Social Sources of Delinquency: An Appraisal of Analytic Models. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Krivo, Lauren J., & Peterson, Ruth D. (1996) “Extremely Disadvantaged Neighborhoods and Urban Crime,” 75 Social Forces 619–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kruttschnitt, Candace (1980–81) “Social Status and Sentences of Female Offenders,” 2 Law & Society Rev. 247–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LaFree, Gary D. (1989) Rape and Criminal Justice: The Social Construction of Sexual Assault. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
LaFree, Gary D., Drass, Kriss A. & O'Day, Patrick (1992) “Race and Crime in Post-War America: Determinants of African-American and White Rates, 1957–1988,” 30 Criminology 157–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Land, Kenneth C., McCall, Patricia L. & Cohen, Larry E. (1990) “Structural Covariates of Homicide Rates: Are There any Invariances Across Time and Social Space?” 95 American J. of Sociology 922–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lessan, Gloria T., & Sheley, Joseph F. (1992) “Does Law Behave? A Macrolevel Test of Black's Propositions on Change in Law,” 70 Social Forces 655–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loftin, Colin, & Hill, Robert H. (1974) “Regional Culture and Homicide: An Examination of the Gastil-Hackney Thesis,” 39 American Sociological Rev. 714–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marshall, Joseph Jr., & Wheeler, Lonnie (1996) Street Soldier: One Man's Struggle to Change a Generation—One Life at a Time. New York: Delacourte.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas, & Denton, Nancy A. (1988) “Suburbanization and Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas,” 94 American J. of Sociology 592–626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massey, Douglas, & Denton, Nancy (1993) American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas, & Eggers, Mitchell L. (1990) “The Ecology of Inequality: Minorities and the Concentration of Poverty, 1970–1980,” 95 American J. of Sociology 1153–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massey, James L., & Myers, Martha A. (1989) “Patterns of Repressive Social Control in Post-Reconstruction Georgia, 1882–1935,” 68 Social Forces 458–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McBarnet, Doreen J. (1981) Conviction: Law, the State and the Construction of Justice. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mesch, Gustavo S., & Talmud, Ilan (1998) “The Influence of Community Characteristics on Police Performance in a Deeply Divided Society: The Case of Israel,” 31 Sociological Focus 233- 48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Messner, Steven F. (1982) “Poverty, Inequality, and the Urban Homicide Rate,” 20 Criminology 103–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Messner, Steven F. (1983) “Regional and Racial Effects on the Urban Homicide Rate: The Subculture of Violence Revisited,” 88 American J. of Sociology 997–1007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Messner, Steven F., & Golden, Reid M. (1992) “Racial Inequality and Racially Disaggregated Homicide Rates: An Assessment of Alternative Theoretical Explanations,” 30 Criminology 421–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Messner, Steven F., & Sampson, Robert J. (1991) “The Sex Ratio, Family Disruption, and Rates of Violent Crime: The Paradox of Demographic Structure,” 69 Social Forces 693–714.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, Marshall (1994) “Measuring Performance in Economic Organizations,” in Handbook of Economic Sociology, Smelser, N. & Swedberg, R., eds. New York: Princeton Univ. Press & Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Michalowski, Raymond, & Pearson, Michael (1990) “Punishment and Social Structure at the State Level: A Cross-Sectional Comparison of 1970 and 1980,” 27 J. of Research in Crime & Delinquency 52–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrill, Calvin (1995) The Executive Way: Conflict Management in Corporations. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Myers, Martha A. (1980) “Predicting the Behavior of Law: A Test of Two Models,” 14 Law & Society Rev. 835–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, Robert M. (1987) “The Interracial Nature of Violent Crime: A Reexamination,” 92 American J. of Sociology 817–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, Karen F., & McCall, Patricia L. (1997) “Adding Another Piece to the Inequality-Homicide Puzzle: The Impact of Structural Inequality on Racially Disaggregated Homicide Rates,” 1 Homicide Studies: An Interdisciplinary & International J. 35–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, Karen F., & McCall, Patricia L. (1999) “Structural Conditions and Racial Homicide Patterns: A Look at the Multiple Disadvantages in Urban Areas,” 37 Criminology 447–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parker, Karen F., McCall, Patricia L. & Land, Kenneth C. (1999) “Determining Social Structural Predictors of Homicide: Unit of Analysis and Other Methodological Concerns,” in Homicide: A Sourcebook of Social Research, M. D. Smith & M. A. Zahn, eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication.Google Scholar
Peterson, Ruth D., & Krivo, Lauren J. (1993) “Racial Segregation and Black Urban Homicide,” 71 Social Forces 1001–26.Google Scholar
Phillips, L., & L. Votey, H. Jr. (1972) “An Economic Analysis of the Deterrent Effect of Law Enforcement on Criminal Activity,” 63 J. of Criminal Law, Criminology & Political Science 330–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pogue, T. F. (1975) “Effect of Police Expenditures on Crime Rate: Some Evidence,” 3 Public Finance Quart. 14–44.Google Scholar
Radelet, Michael L., & Pierce, Glenn L. (1991) “Choosing Those Who Will Die: Race and the Death Penalty in Florida,” 43 Florida Law Rev. 1–34.Google Scholar
Rose, Dina R., & Clear, Todd R. (1998) “Incarceration, Social Capital, and Crime: Implications for Social Disorganization Theory,” 36 Criminology 441–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Robert J. (1986) “Crime in Cities: The Effects of Formal and Informal Social Control,” in Communities and Crime, J. Reiss, A. Jr. & Tonry, M., eds. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sampson, Robert J. (1987) “Urban Black Violence: The Effect of Male Joblessness and Family Disruption,” 93 American J. of Sociology 348–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., & Groves, W. Byron (1989) “Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social Disorganization Theory,” 94 American J. of Sociology 774–802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., Morenoff, Jeffrey D. & Earls, Felton (1999) “Spatial Dynamics of Collective Efficacy for Children,” 64 American Sociological Rev. 633–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., Raudenbush, Stephen W. and Earls, Felton (1997) “Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multi-Level Study of Collective Efficacy,” 227 Science 2–25.Google Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., Raudenbush, Stephen W. and Earls, Felton (1998) “Neighborhood Collective Efficacy—Does It Help Reduce Violence?” National Institute of Justice Research Preview. Office of Justice Programs: National Institute of Justice. U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC: GPO.Google Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., & Wilson, William Julius (1995) “Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality,” in Crime and Inequality, J. Hagan & R. D. Peterson, eds. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Senechal de la Roche, Roberta (1996) “Collective Violence as Social Control,” 11 Sociological Forum 97–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaw, Clifford, & McKay, Henry (1942) Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Shakur, Sanyika (1993) Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Shihadeh, Edward S., & Flynn, Nicole (1996) “Segregation and Crime: The Effect of Black Social Isolation on the Rates of Black Urban Violence,” 74 Social Forces 1325–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shihadeh, Edward S., & Maume, Michael O. (1997) “Segregation and Crime: The Relationship Between Black Centralization and Urban Black Homicide,” 1 Homicide Studies: An Interdisciplinary & International J. 254–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shihadeh, Edward S., & Steffensmeier, Darrell J. (1994) “Economic Inequality, Family Disruption, and Urban Black Violence: Cities as Units of Stratification and Social Control,” 73 Social Forces 729–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, David (1991) Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.Google Scholar
Sjoquist, D. L. (1973) “Property Crime and Economic Behavior: Some Empirical Results,” 63 American Economic Rev. 439–46.Google Scholar
Smith, Douglas A. (1987) “Police Response to Interpersonal Violence: Defining the Parameters of Legal Control,” 65 Social Forces 767–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Douglas A., & Uchida, Craig D. (1988) “The Social Organization of Self-Help: A Study of Defensive Weapons Ownership,” 53 American Sociological Rev. 94–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staples, William G. (1987) “Law and Social Control in Juvenile Justice Dispositions,” 24 J. of Research in Crime & Delinquency 7.Google Scholar
Thaler, Richard (1977) “An Econometric Analysis of Property Crime: Interaction Between Police and Criminals,” 8 J. of Public Economics 37–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tittle, Charles R., & Rowe, Alan R. (1974) “Certainty of Arrest on Crime Rates: A Further Test of the Deterrence Hypothesis,” 54 Social Forces 455–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, James Q., & Boland, Barbara (1978) “The Effect of the Police on Crime.” 12 Law & Society Rev. 367–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, William Julius (1987) The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar