Racial Threat, Concentrated Disadvantage and Social Control: Considering the Macro-Level Sources of Variation in Arrests

• NCJ Number: 212617
• Journal: Criminology Volume: 43 Issue: 4 Dated: November 2005 Pages: 1111-1134
• Author(s): Karen F. Parker; Brian J. Stults; Stephen K. Rice
• Date Published: November 2005
• Length: 24 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

In an attempt to expand past research on the racial threat hypothesis, this study examined the impact of multiple measures of racial economic threat on African-American arrest rates and how the concentration of African-American disadvantage may temper the extent to which African-Americans pose a threat to White interests.

Abstract

The past three decades have seen an accumulation of theoretical and empirical research focusing on the racial threat hypothesis with far-reaching scope. The racial threat perspective suggests that as the relative size of the minority group increases, members of the majority group perceive a growing threat to their positions and will take steps to reduce the competition or threat. Although the relative size of the African-American population is consistently used as the indicator of racial threat in most of these studies, support for the threat thesis has been mixed. This study was interested in examining the relationship between racial threat and African-American arrests using a sample of large United States cities in 2000. The study compared the influence of racial threat indicators on African-American and White arrest rates to determine whether the effect of racial threat on the use of social control was unique to minority populations. In addition, the study tested for potential links between urban disadvantage and the use of social control against African-Americans in a way that was consistent with racial threat and race-relations arguments. The study consisted of 245 United States cities with a population of 100,000 residents or more in 2000. The results revealed that the size of the African-American population and African-American immigration had a negative impact on African-American arrest rates in urban cities. As the African-American population climbed, African-American arrests declined, supporting the benign-neglect hypothesis originally posed in 1984. Future analysis must examine both the Asian and Hispanic minority populations which have increased dramatically over the last two decades and their influence of perceived threat. Tables, references and appendix