Assessing the Structural Covariates of Race-Specific Crime across Measures of Offending, Arrest, and Victimization

• In Event: Covariates of Race-Specific Violence

Abstract

Amidst the burgeoning literature on race, community context, and crime, criminologists have increasingly interchanged measures of race/ethnic-specific arrest, offending, and victimization in examining the macro-level predictors of crime under the assumption that (a) arrests reflect actual violent incidents and (b) most violence is intra-group. Yet, major demographic shifts within the past decade – including heightened immigration and subsequent increases in diversity – and emerging empirical research exploring crime among these new groups call into question whether sizeable shares of race/ethnic-specific crime are inter-group. Likewise, separate empirical work points to disparities across racial and ethnic groups in arrest decision-making and reporting of victimization, suggesting that arrest and victimization data are not always synonymous with violent offending. Thus, the goal of the current study is to assess the structural covariates of race/ethnic-specific crime across offending, victimization, and arrest measures using 2008-2012 National Incident Based System Reporting data for a large sample of cities. Implications for extant and future research are discussed. Triangulating findings across multiple measures of violence better clarifies the ways structural conditions influence violence for particular groups and better informs theories of race and crime.

Authors

• Noah Painter-Davis, University of New Mexico

• Casey Taggart Harris, University of Arkansas