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Most recent unemployment‐crime (U‐C) research is informed by the possibility that unemployment could both increase motivation for crime and decrease criminal opportunities. The mediating links of motivation and opportunity, though often assumed, have almost never been measured. We directly test for the potential mediating effects of opportunity and motivation using county‐level data for target‐specific crime rates such as convenience store robberies, motorcycle thefts, etc. We link these with data on the supply and value of corresponding crime targets (e.g., number and annual sales of convenience stores). Opportunity levels were generally unrelated to property crime rates and do not appear to mediate the U‐C relationship.

The juvenile justice system was founded on, and until recently developed around, the idea that society should afford delinquents more leniency and rehabilitative care than adult criminals because of their lower levels of physical and cognitive development and, thus, diminished culpability for law violations and higher amenability to treatment. The past four decades, however, have witnessed a sustained movement to recriminalize delinquency through the enactment of policies that treat juvenile offenders more like their adult counterparts.Feld (1999a)and others have argued that this punitive turn in juvenile justice is in part a result of the racialization of delinquency and violent victimization in the post–Civil Rights era. This study provides the first test of the key assumption underlying this thesis, namely, that Whites' support for getting tough with juvenile offenders is in part tied to racialized views of youth crime. Drawing on data from a recent national survey, we examine the extent to which relative racial typifications about delinquency and victimization, as well as racial resentment, are associated with general punitiveness toward juvenile offenders as well as support for lower minimum ages of criminal justice jurisdiction. Regression results show that Whites who hold such typifications and those who are more racially resentful are both more likely to embrace punitive youth justice policies and favor transfers for younger offenders. The implications of the findings are discussed.

This paper assesses whether support for harsh punitive policies toward crime is related to the racial typification of crime for a national random sample of households (N=885), surveyed in 2002. Results from OLS regression show that the racial typification of crime is a significant predictor of punitiveness, independent of the influence of racial prejudice, conservatism, crime salience, southern residence and other factors. This relationship is shown to be concentrated among whites who are either less prejudiced, not southern, conservative and for whom crime salience is low. The results broaden our understanding of the links between racial threat and social control, beyond those typically associated with racial composition of place. They also resonate important themes in what some have termed modern racism and what others have described as the politics of exclusion.

Data from a 1997 survey of 2, 250 Florida residents are used to assess whether and how the reality of crime influences the relationship between watching TV news and fear of crime. Local crime rates, victim experience, and perceived realism of crime news operationalize the reality of crime and are included in ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates of the TV news and fear of crime relationship. These measures of reality are also used as contexts for disaggregating the analysis. Local and national news are related to fear of crime independent of the effects of the reality of crime and other controls. Local news effects are stronger, especially for people who live in high crime places or have recent victim experience. This contextual pattern of findings is consistent with a conclusion that TV news is most influential when it resonates the experience or crime reality of respondents.

A relationship between fear of crime and the racial composition of place has been widely assumed but seldom tested. Interviews conducted with a random sample of adults residing in a major state capital in the early months of 1994‐at the height of a media‐driven panic about violent crime‐are used to test the proposition that as the percentage of blacks in one's neighborhood increases, so too will the fear of crime. We use objective and perceptual measures of racial composition, and we examine the effects of racial composition and minority status on fear of crime for black and white respondents. We distinguish between perceived safety or risk of victimization and fear, with the former used as an intervening variable in path models of fear of crime. Results show that actual racial composition has no consequence for the fear of crime when other relevant factors are controlled. Perceived racial composition is significant for fear among whites, but not among African‐Americans. In particular, the perception that one is in the racial minority in one's neighborhood elevates fear among whites but not among blacks. All effects of perceived racial composition on fear are indirect and mediated by the perception of risk of crime.

This article examines whether and in what ways punitive attitudes toward criminals can be understood as having roots in two hypothesized sources of anxiety in western society. The first is the danger of crime and its salience and the second is economic insecurity. Both have been seen as sources of growing perceptions that the State is failing in its responsibility to provide for citizen's physical safety and economic security. Punitiveness toward criminals is hypothesized by some to be a way to act decisively in a time of relative uncertainty. It also serves to distinguish between the `undeserving poor' and those who are economically insecure. Interviews with 2250 randomly selected Florida residents provide the data for this study. Our results indicate that crime salience, especially fear and concern about crime consistently predict punitiveness. When economic insecurity is measured in terms of expected circumstances in the near future, it is significantly linked to punitive attitudes among white males, particularly those who are less well educated and earn less income. The results are consistent with some aspects of an `angry white male' phenomenon, particularly to the extent that those negative sentiments have a racial focus.

Florida law allows judges to withhold adjudication of guilt for individuals who have been found guilty of a felony and are being sentenced to probation. Such individuals lose no civil rights and may lawfully assert they had not been convicted of a felony. Labeling theory would predict that the receipt of a felony label could increase the likelihood of recidivism. Reconviction data for 95,919 men and women who were either adjudicated or had adjudication withheld show that those formally labeled are significantly more likely to recidivate in 2 years than those who are not. Labeling effects are stronger for women, whites, and those who reach the age of 30 years without a prior conviction. Second‐level indicators of county characteristics (e.g., crime rates or concentrated disadvantage) have no significant effect on the adjudication/recidivism relationship.

Recent theoretical advancements of the racial threat model of punitiveness suggest that because youthful offending has driven crime trends in recent decades, and because racially exclusive conceptions of childhood have historically structured public opinion on juvenile justice, Black criminal stereotypes may be especially consequential for attitudes toward juvenile punishments. Building on this work, the current study uses national survey data to examine whether the strength of the relationship between Black criminal stereotypes and support for punitive policies varies according to whether punishments are targeted toward juvenile delinquents or criminals in general. We find that Black criminal stereotypes are positively associated with punitive attitudes and that the magnitude of this effect is statistically identical in the cases of youth-specific and nonyouth-specific sanctions. Thus, the results suggest that racialized support for punitive crime policies is not influenced by the juvenility of the offender.

Recent theoretical extensions of threat theory have posited that Whites frequently view Blacks as a criminal threat because of stereotypes linking race and crime. Several studies have found indirect support for this hypothesis and have shown that the percentage of neighborhood residents who are Black is positively associated with the perceptions of victimization risk and fear of crime by White residents. To date, however, little research has investigated whether, as theory would suggest, this relationship is either a consequence of or is contingent on Whites holding stereotypes of Blacks as criminals. In this article, we address this issue by examining whether racial typification of crime mediates or moderates the relationships between static and dynamic measures of neighborhood racial composition and the perceptions of victimization risk by Whites. The results offer mixed support for the threat hypothesis and show that racial typification of crime conditions the relationship between perceived changes in neighborhood racial composition and the perceptions of victimization risk by Whites, but neither explains nor influences the association between static measures of racial composition and the latter. The implications of the findings for threat theory and research are discussed.