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"One of the most influential statements in the anomie theory tradition has been Merton's argument that the volume of instrumental property crime should be higher where there is a greater imbalance between the degree of commitment to monetary success goals and the degree of commitment to legitimate means of pursing such goals. Contemporary anomie theories stimulated by Merton's perspective, most notably Messner and Rosenfeld's institutional anomie theory, have expanded the scope conditions by emphasizing lethal criminal violence as an outcome to which anomie theory is highly relevant, and virtually all contemporary empirical studies have focused on applying the perspective to explaining spatial variation in homicide rates. In the present paper, the authors argue that current explications of Merton's theory and IAT have not adequately conveyed the relevance of the core features of the anomie perspective to lethal violence. They propose an expanded anomie model in which an unbalanced pecuniary value system - the core causal variable in Merton's theory and IAT - translates into higher levels of homicide primarily in indirect ways by increasing levels of firearm prevalence, drug market activity, and property crime, and by enhancing the degree to which these factors stimulate lethal outcomes. Using aggregate-level data collected during the mid-to-late 1970s for a sample of relatively large social aggregates within the U.S., the authors find a significant effect on homicide rates of an interaction term reflecting high levels of commitment to monetary success goals and low levels of commitment to legitimate means. Virtually all of this effect is accounted for by higher levels of property crime and drug market activity that occur in areas with an unbalanced pecuniary value system. Their analysis also reveals that property crime is more apt to lead to homicide under conditions of high levels of structural disadvantage. These and other findings underscore the potential value of elaborating the anomie perspective to explicitly account for lethal violence." (author's abstract)

One of the most influential statements in the anomie theory tradition has been Merton's argument that the volume of instrumental property crime should be higher where there is a greater imbalance between the degree of commitment to monetary success goals and the degree of commitment to legitimate means of pursuing such goals. Contemporary anomie theories stimulated by Merton's perspective, most notably Messner and Rosenfeld's institutional anomie theory, have expanded the scope conditions by emphasizing lethal criminal violence as an outcome to which anomie theory is highly relevant, and virtually all contemporary empirical studies have focused on applying the perspective to explaining spatial variation in homicide rates. In the present paper, we argue that current explications of Merton's theory and IAT have not adequately conveyed the relevance of the core features of the anomie perspective to lethal violence. We propose an expanded anomie model in which an unbalanced pecuniary value system - the core causal variable in Merton's theory and IAT - translates into higher levels of homicide primarily in indirect ways by increasing levels of firearm prevalence, drug market activity, and property crime, and by enhancing the degree to which these factors stimulate lethal outcomes. Using aggregate-level data collected during the mid-to-late 1970s for a sample of relatively large social aggregates within the U.S., we find a significant effect on homicide rates of an interaction term reflecting high levels of commitment to monetary success goals and low levels of commitment to legitimate means. Virtually all of this effect is accounted for by higher levels of property crime and drug market activity that occur in areas with an unbalanced pecuniary value system. Our analysis also reveals that property crime is more apt to lead to homicide under conditions of high levels of structural disadvantage. These and other findings underscore the potential value of elaborating the anomie perspective to explicitly account for lethal violence. Adapted from the source document.

Do minorities live in higher crime neighborhoods because they lack the class resources to live in better areas, or do racial differences in exposure to crime persist even for blacks and whites of comparable backgrounds? Does living in the suburbs reduce exposure to crime equally for whites and blacks? This study analyzes the determinants of living in local areas with higher or lower crime rates in the Cleveland metropolitan region in 1990. Multivariate models are estimated for whites and blacks, with separate models for city and suburban residents and for violent crime and property crime. Within the city, exposure to both types of crime is strongly related to socioeconomic status for both races, but there are also strong independent effects of race on exposure to violent crime. In the suburbs, whites are concentrated in communities with low crime rates regardless of their social class. There are substantial class differences among suburban nonwhites, but even afluent blacks live in places with a higher violent crime rate than do poor whites.

We advance a structural racism approach to understanding the variation in homicide across the U.S. states. We conceptualize structural racism by juxtaposing the conditions for Blacks with those for Whites across multiple domains. We also include two ideological beliefs, racial resentments and Whites perceptions that their racialized social status is threatened by minority gains. The results show that higher Black homicide rates are associated with greater exposure to structural racism and that states with more Whites who harbor racial resentments have higher rates of Black homicides. We also found that states with more Whites who feel that their status is threatened exhibit higher rates of White homicides. However, the results reveal that structural racism exhibits a non-significant association with White homicide rates. We conclude that the challenge going forward is to develop strategies that can undo the oppression of Blacks without enhancing attitudes of Whites that promote criminality.

Several studies have examined the relationship between racial threat (measured by the size of black population) and social control imposed on blacks, but evidence of this hypothesis has been mixed. Although dependency on percent black as the main indicator of racial threat in many studies has contributed to the inconsistency in findings, we argue that this literature has also neglected to consider other important conceptual and methodological issues. Using 2000 census and arrest data, we estimate the impact of multiple measures of racial economic threat, such as the size of the black population, racial inequality and black immigration patterns on black arrest rates. Furthermore, by integrating racial competition and race‐relations arguments, we examine how the concentration of black disadvantage may temper the extent to which blacks pose a threat to white interests. Our findings reveal important and conceptually distinct relationships between racial threat, concentrated disadvantage and the use of social control against blacks, particularly when compared to white arrests.

Self-employment and work in sectors with high concentrations of owners and workers of the same ethnicity have been identified as potential routes of economic success for immigrants. This study uses 1990 census data to assess the effects of self-employment, ethnic employment, and their interaction on the odds of being at work, on number of hours worked, and on earnings of individual members of several representative groups. These groups include Cubans in Miami; African Americans, Puerto Ricans, Koreans, Chinese and Dominicans in New York; and African Americans, Koreans, Chinese, Mexicans and Salvadorans in Los Angeles. Work in ethnic sectors of the economy has no consistent effects, although work in their niche in the public sector offers greater rewards than any other type of employment for African Americans and Puerto Ricans. Findings are mixed for self-employment, and its estimated effect on earnings depends on model specification. We conclude that the self-employed work longer hours but in many cases at lower hourly rates. The effects of self-employment are the same in ethnic sectors as in the mainstream economy.

Social scientists routinely rely on methods of interpolation to adjust available data to their research needs. Spatial data from different sources often are based on different geographies that need to be reconciled, and some boundaries (e.g., administrative or political boundaries) change frequently. This study calls attention to the potential for substantial error in efforts to harmonize data to constant boundaries using standard approaches to areal and population interpolation. The case in point is census tract boundaries in the United States, which are redefined before every decennial census. Research on neighborhood effects and neighborhood change rely heavily on estimates of local area characteristics for a consistent area of time, for which they now routinely use estimates based on interpolation offered by sources such as the Neighborhood Change Data Base (NCDB) and Longitudinal Tract Data Base (LTDB). We identify a fundamental problem with how these estimates are created, and we reveal an alarming level of error in estimates of population characteristics in 2000 within 2010 boundaries. We do this by comparing estimates from one of these sources (the LTDB) to true values calculated by re-aggregating original 2000 census microdata to 2010 tract areas. We then demonstrate an alternative approach that allows the re-aggregated values to be publicly disclosed, using "differential privacy" (DP) methods to inject random noise that meets Census Bureau standards for protecting confidentiality of the raw data. We show that the DP estimates are considerably more accurate than the LTDB estimates based on interpolation, and we examine conditions under which interpolation is more susceptible to error. This study reveals cause for greater caution in the use of interpolated estimates from any source. Until and unless DP estimates can be publicly disclosed for a wide range of variables and years, research on neighborhood change should routinely examine data for signs of estimation error that may be substantial in a large ...

Age is the only factor used to demarcate the boundary between juvenile and adult justice. However, little research has examined how age guides the juvenile court in determining which youth within the juvenile justice system merit particular dispositions, especially those that reflect the court's emphasis on rehabilitation. Drawing on scholarship on the court's origins, attribution theory, and cognitive heuristics, we hypothesize that the court focuses on youth in the middle of the range of the court's age of jurisdiction—characterized in this article as "true" juveniles—who may be viewed as meriting more specialized intervention. We use data from Florida for court referrals in 2008 (N = 71,388) to examine the decision to proceed formally or informally and, in turn, to examine formally processed youth dispositions (dismissal, diversion, probation, commitment, and transfer) and informally processed youth dispositions (dismissal, diversion, and probation). The analyses provide partial support for the hypothesis. The very young were more likely to be informally processed; however, among the informally processed youth, the youngest, not "true" juveniles, were most likely to be diverted or placed on probation. By contrast, among formally processed youth, "true" juveniles were most likely to receive traditional juvenile court responses, such as diversion or probation.