Racial/ethnic Change, Minority Threat, and Race-specific Arrests in Cleveland Neighborhoods, 1990 – 2010

• In Event: The Consequences of Change for Neighborhood Institutions and Social Control

Abstract

Studies examining racial/ethnic transition in neighborhoods have largely focused on the social or structural consequences of change. However, racial/ethnic change may also influence policing outcomes, especially if the racial/ethnic change is perceived as threatening. In neighborhoods that have shifted from a predominantly White residential composition to predominantly Black or mixed, non-White suspects may be arrested at disproportionately higher rates as an exertion of power over an incoming or threatening group. We examine racial/ethnic change over time and space using race-specific arrest rates as an indicator of racial/ethnic (minority) threat. We use arrest data from Cleveland between 1990 and 2010 to test (1) whether changes in the racial/ethnic composition of neighborhoods impact who is arrested, controlling for changes in the underlying crime rate, (2) whether this relationship varies based on how neighborhoods are transitioning (e.g., predominantly Black to White or vice-versa), and (3) the role racial/ethnic shifts in spatially proximate communities may play. We anticipate that minority arrest rates will be disproportionately higher in neighborhoods experiencing more pronounced racial/ethnic change or are surrounded by neighborhoods also experiencing racial/ethnic flux, and that this will be particularly the case in predominantly White neighborhoods undergoing any degree of racial change.

Authors

• Alyssa Chamberlain, Arizona State University

• Lyndsay Boggess, University of South Florida