Intergroup and Intragroup Violence: Is Violent Crime an Expression of Group Conflict or Social Disorganization?

• NCJ Number: 227314
• Journal: Criminology Volume: 47 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2009 Pages: 521-564
• Author(s): John R. Hipp; George E. Tita; Lindsay N. Boggess
• Date Published: May 2009
• Length: 44 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Using incident-level data for the South Bureau Policing Area of the Los Angeles Police Department aggregated to census tracts, this study examined intragroup and intergroup rates of robbery and assaults in attempting to determine whether neighborhood violent crime stemed from group conflict or social disorganization.

Abstract

The study found some evidence that the economically disadvantaged group in a neighborhood would commit violence against the more affluent group (intergroup violence). Latinos or African-Americans committed more intergroup violence when they experienced relative racial/ethnic inequality. This effect was frequently observed in circumstances of adjacent tracts with differing mean-income levels. This finding supports the consolidated inequality theory. Less support was found for the group threat theory; however, there was some evidence that African-Americans responded with intergroup violence due to increasing economic challenges from an incoming group (Latinos). On the other hand, the study also found that greater relative racial inequality in nearby tracts led to more Latino intergroup violence in the focal tract. This latter finding is more consistent with the consolidated inequality model, in which the economically disadvantaged group responds violently. African-American neighborhoods with an influx of Latinos simultaneously experienced increased levels of intragroup and intergroup violence committed by Latinos. This finding is less supportive of the defended neighborhood theory and more consistent with the social disorganization perspective, which maintains that social distance reduces interaction among groups, which then reduces social control. An important finding was that intragroup violence was nearly always more common than intergroup violence, meaning that Latinos were more likely to rob or assault fellow Latinos than African-Americans; and African-Americans were more likely to assault other African-Americans when committing robberies. Intragroup violence happened least frequently in neighborhoods in which a racial/ethnic group was numerically dominant, which suggests that neighborhoods of mixed race without one race/ethnic group being dominant, is vulnerable to higher crime rates. 5 tables, 4 figures, and 75 references