Discrimination and Delinquency among Mexican American Adolescents

• In Event: Racial Discrimination and Crime

Abstract

Major theoretical explanations for the overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities in criminal justice statistics have historically neglected a fundamental feature of ethnic minorities’ experiences -- perceived personal discrimination. More recent investigations suggest that experiences of discrimination are linked to increases in delinquency; however, extant research in this area has focused almost exclusively on African Americans. In the current research, we investigate whether these same processes are evident in a sample of Mexican American adolescents. Previous research has indicated that discrimination is an important mediator of the association between neighborhood structural conditions and delinquency among African Americans. We hypothesize that neighborhoods characterized by high levels of concentrated disadvantage will also expose Mexican American adolescents to greater levels of discrimination, which in turn will increase the likelihood of their involvement in delinquency. Research suggests ethnic socialization is important for the adaptive functioning of ethnic and racial minority adolescents. We hypothesize it may also act as a source of resilience for adolescents experiencing discrimination, compensating and/or buffering the putative effect of discrimination on delinquency. We test these hypotheses using panel data from several hundred Mexican American adolescents from the California Families Project, a longitudinal study of Mexican-origin families living in Northern California.

Author

• Monica J. Martin, University of California, Davis