Race, Crime, and the Changing Fortunes of Urban Neighborhoods (1999-2013)

• In Event: Temporal Trends and Urban Violence: Enduring Patterns and New Challenges

Abstract

Serious crime is concentrated in ways that are highly racialized. Yet, ethno-racial inequality and the socioeconomic circumstances that undergird crime changed substantially in the wake of the Great Recession. As fallout from this crisis spread, increases in disadvantage, poverty, and home foreclosures, and decreases in homeownership and population hit Black and Latino neighborhoods principally. Crime levels, however, dropped dramatically across many areas in the United States. How are the changing fortunes of U.S. neighborhoods linked with violent and property crime during this period? Are the dynamics of urban inequality reinforcing or diminishing racial/ethnic disparities in neighborhood crime? We explore these questions by applying group-based trajectory analyses to serious crime from 1999 to 2013 for neighborhoods across 20 cities; we then assess the influence of housing, and socioeconomic data to explain membership in crime trajectories. Analyses point to durable inequalities in the spatial and ethno-racial distribution of serious crime. White neighborhoods continue to enjoy low levels and decreasing crime. Only some Black and Latino neighborhoods benefitted from the national crime drop while crime increased in an important share of neighborhoods, especially those that are predominantly Black. The spread of disadvantage, foreclosures, vacancies and de-population are responsible for the increases in crime.

Authors

• Jason B. Phillips, Rutgers University–New Brunswick

• Lauren Krivo, Rutgers University

• Maria Beatriz Velez, University of New Mexico

• Christopher Joseph Lyons, University of New Mexico

• Elizabeth Sabbath, University of New Mexico