Neighborhood Diversity, Racial Threat, and Social Control: Examining Variability by Disadvantage and Racial Composition

• In Event: Communities and Place: Neighborhood Dynamics, Violence, and Social Control - Exploring Crime, Reentry, and Racial Contexts

Abstract

The structural tradition of racial threat has produced numerous studies linking threat indicators to social control, ranging from police stops to incarceration. While these studies propose that a growing minority group will pose an economic and political threat to the majority, resulting in higher levels of social control, few studies account for how racial diversification and levels of concentrated disadvantage in neighborhoods will influence this relationship. In this study, we incorporate data on homicide arrests of white, black and Hispanic perpetrators in neighborhoods of the 50 largest U.S. cities (from 2008-2017) when investigating the relationship between racial threat and arrest rates. These data allow us to estimate the threat-social control relationship across neighborhood types that vary in levels of intergroup contact and concentration of disadvantage.

Authors

• Karen F. Parker, University of Delaware

• Richard Stansfield, Rutgers University