Racial Composition, Collective Efficacy, and Crime: Black Urban Neighborhoods and the Ethnic Enclave Hypothesis

• In Event: Crime, Law and Deviance Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 7: Neighborhoods and Crime

Abstract

Scholarship on community level structural disadvantage in the US context has long debated the role of segregation and racial composition in shaping neighborhood wellbeing. We consider extant theoretical perspectives on the association of Black population concentration in urban neighborhoods with both collective efficacy (mutual trust combined with the conjoint capacity to intervene on behalf of shared goals) and violent crime. We then test varying expectations on these associations drawing on data from the 2014-16 Columbus, Ohio-based Adolescent Health and Development in Context study in combination with American Community Survey data on neighborhood structural characteristics, and administrative data on violent crime rates. Contrary to prevailing assumptions regarding Black-concentrated urban neighborhoods, we find that, net of economic disadvantage, increasing proportion Black is associated with reduced collective efficacy and increased violent crime only at low baseline levels of Black population presence. Beyond a threshold, increasing neighborhood proportion Black is associated with increases in collective efficacy and declines in violent crime.

Authors

• June Postalakis, The Ohio State University

• Christopher R Browning, Ohio State University

• Bethany Boettner, Ohio State University

• Catherine Calder, The University of Texas at Austin