A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Racial and Ethnic Context on Social Control

• In Event: Empirical Advances in Critical Criminology

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to analyze and synthesize the studies that have been published in the last five decades on the effects of racial and ethnic context on multiple and varied dimensions of social control. To this end, we searched for studies using four databases: Criminal Justice Abstracts, SCOPUS, Social Science Abstract, and Sociological Abstracts. Search terms used were “minority threat” or “racial threat” or “ethnic threat” AND “social control” or “crime control.” Studies meeting the inclusion criteria are articles that contain a variable that is any form of informal or formal social control, and a variable indicating racial or ethnic context, and effect size data on the relationship between racial and ethnic context and social control. We coded these studies for a range of variables related to methodological variations, and conducted a meta-analysis to assess the overall effect size of racial and ethnic composition across all dimensions of social control and investigate how the magnitude of effect size varies by race and ethnicity, different dimensions of social control, different units of analysis, different measurement of racial and ethnic context, and different geographic and historical settings. We discuss our analysis’s implications for the minority threat perspective and research.

Authors

• Xia Wang, Arizona State University

• Skyler Morgan, California State University, Long Beach