Religion, Race/Ethnicity, and Lethal and Non-Lethal Violence

• In Event: Covariates of Race-Specific Violence

Abstract

Criminologists have increasingly sought to untangle how structural and demographic characteristics of communities are linked with social problems like violent crime. Yet, socio-cultural features of communities remain relatively under-examined, including how religious contextual characteristics are associated with rates of crime and violence across communities, despite calls for greater attention to such institutions. Relatedly, even among the small number of empirical studies to integrate such features, few have disaggregated violence by race/ethnicity to explore the multi-faceted ways that explore whether and how the manifestation of religion at the macro-level uniquely impacts crime and violence for Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and even Asians. We address these shortcomings by utilizing a 2010 cross-sectional database constructed from information drawn from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR), Religious Congregations and Membership Survey (RCMS) and United States Census Bureau to assess the religious-contextual correlates of race/ethnic-specific lethal– including both homicide and suicide – and non-lethal violent outcomes. Implications for extant research in sociology and criminology are discussed.

Authors

• Raymond E. Barranco, Mississippi State University

• Casey Taggart Harris, University of Arkansas