Unequal Crime Decline

Theorizing Race, Urban Inequality, and Criminal Violence

Karen F. Parker

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780814767856
• eBook ISBN: 9780814767726
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

2009 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
Crime in most urban areas has been falling since 1991. While the decline has been well-documented, few scholars have analyzed which groups have most benefited from the crime decline and which are still on the frontlines of violence—and why that might be. In Unequal Crime Decline, Karen F. Parker presents a structural and theoretical analysis of the various factors that affect the crime decline, looking particularly at the past three decades and the shifts that have taken place, and offers original insight into which trends have declined and why.
Taking into account such indicators as employment, labor market opportunities, skill levels, housing, changes in racial composition, family structure, and drug trafficking, Parker provides statistics that illustrate how these factors do or do not affect urban violence, and carefully considers these factors in relation to various crime trends, such as rates involving blacks, whites, but also trends among black males, white females, as well as others. Throughout the book she discusses popular structural theories of crime and their limitations, in the end concentrating on today's issues and important contemporary policy to be considered. Unequal Crime Decline is a comprehensive and theoretically sophisticated look at the relationship among race, urban inequality, and violence in the years leading up to and following America's landmark crime drop.

1

Introduction

The study of urban violence has taken an interesting turn. After the turbulent 1980s, when reports of violence, drugs, and economic recession ran daily in major newspapers and media outlets, the crime drop of the 1990s in U.S. cities baffled academicians and the public alike. To our surprise, the lethal 1980s was followed by safer 1990s. Researchers rushed to understand what could cause this dramatic rise and fall in homicide trends over time. Conservation crime control policies, such as rapid incarceration rates and greater police presence, receding drug markets, and changes in gun policies were some of the possible explanations quickly gaining attention.

Few scholars have looked locally into urban areas for answers. A considerable shift has occurred in the urban economy since the 1970s, as the industrial and economic core of cities was largely transformed. Emerging as the “new economy,” the latest economic transition to occur in urban areas has again changed the nature of work for most urban residents, many of whom were dislocated from earlier restructuring. Scholars have paid careful attention to the impact of deindus trialization on urban residents in the 1980s, including, to name only a few among notable others, Anderson’s (1999) Code of the Street and Maher’s (1997) Sexed Work. But few scholars have documented the larger economic shifts since the 1970s, which includes deindustrializa-tion and the emerging new economy of the late 1990s on group relations, including crime trends.

It is these broader changes in the urban landscape over the last three decades that is of interest in this book. The role the local economy plays on the dramatic rise and fall in urban violence over time, though full of complexity, is one subject I examine. This is a sensible investigation, even a practical one, given the enormous body of literature linking economic conditions to crime. The motivation behind this book is not to repeat the unemployment—crime connection but rather to move the discussion forward. In fact, three fundamental facets of the urban landscape are noticeably lacking in attention, and it is my hope to bring them to light in this book.

The Uneven Nature of Urban Violence

Race and gender disparities in violence have been well documented in the criminological literature and official statistics for some time. According to the 2002 Bureau of Justice Statistics, African Americans were seven times more likely than whites to commit murder. Homicide is the leading cause of death among young African Americans, and we know that approximately 85% of violent encounters involves victims and offenders of the same race (e.g., black-on-black and white-on-white crime). Males represent the majority of homicide victims and comprise nearly 90% of offenders.¹ When race and gender are mutually considered, differences become even more pronounced. In 1986 the homicide rate for African American males was about six times higher than white males, and the African American female rate was approximately four times that of white females (Fingerhut and Klein-man 1989). Despite mounting descriptive statistics on the Bureau of Justice Web site or studies on the crime drop that disaggregates by multiple categories, including age, gun ownership, and race, little systematic effort was made to assess whether race and gender disparities in violence persist into the 1990s as the nation experienced the most remarkable crime decline in its history. Instead, during the 1990s, much of the homicide literature either directed its attention toward explaining the drop in total homicides or exploring the structural conditions that influence white and black homicide rates differently. These two areas of research have both grown considerably in terms of scholarly output and attention, but rarely have the two issues been merged together to address the disparate nature of the crime drop. The current literature, then, has largely failed to address whether the crime drop meant that the racial gap was increasing or narrowing (the recent exception is LaFree, O’Brien, and Baumer 2006) and what structural factors could be driving it.

The Local Economy

The economic changes that occurred in urban cities since the 1970s are many. Evidence of growing poverty concentration, joblessness, and distressed conditions in urban neighborhoods throughout American cities has been well documented. Many of these conditions have been linked to shifts in local labor markets, as big industry moved to the suburbs or overseas in pursuit of cheap labor. With any major shift in the local economy, the nature of work must also change. For instance, the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that between 1998 and 2006 almost all work (over 95%) created in the U.S. was based in the service industries (Hesse-Biber and Carter 2004). Changes, like these, in the economic climate filtrate into community life. Some residents will benefit from growth in the service sector, but others will not. Furthermore, Wilson warns that industrial changes occurring since the 1970s were unlike those in earlier decades. He claims that urban residents are less invested in the economic and social institutions of the area (Wilson 1987, 1991). Investments in the community are important, because they bring residents stability in times of economic downturn and change. Since the 1970s urban residents have been vulnerable to industrial and geographic changes in the local economy that have contributed to the growing concentration of poverty and joblessness, greatly impacting relations within and between groups. The changing nature of the urban economy has implications for the economic opportunities of various race and ethnic groups in urban cities. Yet these important changes, particularly how the characteristics of the local economy differentially impact the life chances of race- and gender-specific groups, has had no place in the discussion of the crime drop.

Changing Population Composition

The demographic makeup of cities has also changed considerably and, with it, the nature of group relations. Clearly U.S. cities are among the most race and ethnically diverse in the world. Looking back in time, the U.S. population more than tripled in a century (76 million in 1900, 281 million in 2000). In fact, a handful of states accounted for more than a third (38 percent) of the population growth in the twentieth century (i.e., California, Florida, Texas, and New York). To no surprise, these states are considered as “gateways” for immigration (Logan, Alba, and Zhang 2002; Clark and Blue 2004). In recent times urban areas have only become more diversified racially and ethnically. Whites no longer comprise the majority in some American cities (Clark and Blue 2004). Rather, Blacks and Latinos represent a large proportion in the city populace, as whites gradually move to the suburbs (Massey and Denton 1988). Hispanic (of any race) and Asian populations more than doubled in cities from 1980 to 2000 alone. Today, as researchers increase their attention toward immigration and adapt their studies to take a multiethnic approach, we learn of the unique experiences and history of Hispanics and Asians, experiences that differ from the black experience (Massey and Fong 1990; Fong and Shibuya 2005; Logan, Alba, and Zhang 2002). The labor market experiences of these groups are rooted in their own historic and political background. Yet shifts in the compositions of urban areas and population trends have received little attention in the crime-drop debate.

Here lies the impetus for this book. Essentially the changes in the demographic and economic climate of American cities have profound implications for the way we understand urban violence, including the crime drop. My goal, then, is to offer a coherent and comprehensive look at the relationship between race, urban inequality, and violence that is sensitive to these three important facets of American cities. Although my arguments emerge from the broader framework of race and urban violence, my focus is an area where this link has yet to be explored: the crime drop. After examining the ways that homicide trends differ by race and gender-specific groups over time, I offer some avenues to incorporate literature on race and the local economy into the study of the crime drop. And although criminological theories play a critical role in the study of urban violence, the link between theory and the crime-drop debate remains blurred. Apparently we are undecided about whether criminological theories are relevant to the decline in crime. In fact, there is little to no application of criminological theories—theoretical principles, concepts derived, or links proposed—to the steady decline in urban violence in the 1990s. As I attempt to link race, urban inequality, and violence, theoretical and empirical issues in the study of race and urban crime surface, leading me to consider the role of criminological theory in the crime-drop debate. Overall, the book has three main goals:

1. To illustrate how violence has changed significantly from 1980 to 2000 in urban areas, including the well-documented crime drop of the 1990s, with attention toward how trends differ by race and gender-specific groups;

2. To assess existing structural theories of urban crime in terms of their ability to explain existing racial disparities in urban violence, particularly the dynamic or changing nature of urban violence over time; and

3. To theoretically explore the rise and fall in urban violence by offering linkages between race, urban inequality, and violence that are sensitive to the race- and gender-stratified nature of the local economy and the increasingly diversified composition of urban areas.

Throughout the book I take advantage of various literatures to address and at times integrate these themes. I build on stratification literature where the polarized nature of labor markets has been given considerable attention. The perspectives I review place race concretely in the structure of the economy, impacting the location and opportunity of race and ethnic groups in the labor force. Much like the stratification literature, crim-inological theories are pivotal to this book. I incorporate criminological theories that explore the structural characteristics which promote urban violence and contribute to the breakdown of social control within geographic areas. I draw also from feminist literature on labor markets and crime at various stages throughout the book. Although each perspective is valuable in its own right, I integrate these ideas when possible to offer a comprehensive look at the disparate nature of, and level of change in, urban violence over time. This pursuit of integration requires a macrostructural approach.

The Approach

The approach taken in the book is a structural one, that is, the book does not examine individual or situational characteristics in violence. Individual perspectives tend to focus on the personality of offenders, often neglecting differences in opportunity structures and the presence of structural factors associated with race, gender, and ethnicity. Instead, this book stresses the importance of examining how race and gender are embedded in the opportunity structures of urban areas, contributing to the spatial concentration of disadvantage for distinct groups and, as a result, producing conditions that lead to disparities in urban violence.

In many ways the approach is similar to Sampson and Wilson’s (1995) chapter on racial inequality and urban crime. As a result of the publication of their work, the study of race, urban inequality, and crime has come a long way. We know more about the spatial dimensions in, and structural conditions associated with, urban crime. We also know how certain theoretical arguments fare, such as social disorganization and urban disadvantage, when applied to race-specific crime rates. For example, we now know that Wilson’s idea concerning concentrated disadvantage (or the coupling of concentrated poverty with racial isolation) is relevant to white and black homicide rates. This book is similar in that it incorporates a mixture of ideas from sociology, economics, and criminology. By doing so, the broader macro-structural forces that contribute to crime trends for distinct groups take center stage.

Yet taking a structural approach brings its own set of challenges. For example, how does one conceptualize race and gender divisions that serve the basis of inequality in our society, yet still capture the long-standing inequality and symbolic meaning driving the differential treatment of these groups by others. When researching the word “race” for this book, for instance, I was amazed to find that scholars disagreed entirely on the meaning of the term (Alba 1992; Fredrickson 2002; Loury 2002). Race is a complicated concept, of course, but until now I had not fully appreciated the complexity of the term. Although we tend to define “race” as either “biological” or “social,” the task of defining the term is far more intricate than a simple dichotomy suggests. In practical terms we categorize groups as whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, yet theoretically we do not fully consider how these diverse groups are collectively “racialized” (Cornell and Hartman 2004). By the end of my search, like others, I found the biological versus social dichotomy unproductive and outdated, and the current efforts to measure race and ethnicity did little to reflect the diversity of the populations in which these words would apply.² Far more meaning is given to racial classifications, in that these words activate beliefs and attitudes, assumptions about individuals, and also affect access to resources (e.g., jobs, education, health care) and positions of wealth, power, and income. Thus “race” creates boundaries—spatially and interpersonally—and has enduring consequences. And the salience of race only grows in importance over time. Evidence can easily be found of this claim, such as the effort the census undertakes to provide new and different ways to measure race over time or the recent changes made by the federal government to categories groups by race and ethnicity (Hirschman, Richard, and Farley 2000). Within these efforts lies an important point: the way we conceptualize race and ethnicity changes over time. Recall how Italians and Eastern European Jews were seen as racial groups in the late ninetieth and early twentieth centuries (National Research Council 2004) or how “Mexican” was included as a racial classification in the 1930 census bureau data collection effort, only to be discontinued after protests by the Mexican American community because of the stigmatizing effect it had (Cortes 1980; Hirschman, Richard, and Farley 2000). My point is that racial statuses change over time, as do the ways that we think and talk about them. Therefore our definitions must also change, as they are linked to the larger structural context. In this book, then, race is based on social and ascribed characteristics that have significant meaning for both the observer and the observed, and are informed by the larger economic and political climate.

In much of the literature, gender is as much about what we do as who we are. Just as “black” was an identity that revealed a sense of pride and power in the 1960s, empowerment is an attribute associated with gender, often reflecting something a person has or does not have. In this way, gender, much like race, demarks a process that is both interpersonal and social structural. Gender is used in this book to highlight the socially constructed differences between males and females rather than any biological differences that may be implied by the demarcation of “sex.” For me, gender serves as a basis to identify and characterize where inequalities tend to form. Because our definitions of race and gender shift with the social, economic, and political times, these terms cannot be viewed separately from these institutions. In other words, gender, like race, is embedded in societal institutions, influencing ones access to resources, opportunities, and the ability to make decisions.

Changes in societal institutions, like the economy, can create barriers that exacerbate inequalities between groups; such institutions may also foster an environment in which inequalities are reduced. A prime example is racial discrimination. The idea that a wide range of racial disparities exists in economic and social realms is rarely in doubt. In fact, when drawing from a number of theories or previous studies, many researchers freely acknowledge that discrimination plays a role in our society. An African American female is fired because the employer feels uncomfortable working with her. A Hispanic male is passed up for a promotion because his employer feels he is not suitable for managerial positions. These acts of discrimination are recognized by scholars and the public alike. The issue, then, is how to capture discrimination in the aggregate, even those acts that are not based on stereotypes, emotions, or prejudices, such as the case with statistical discrimination (Baumle and Fossett 2005). Like other researchers, this challenge led me to turn to the existing literature for guidance. After a systematic review of studies that incorporated measures of racial inequality in the study of violence, I found numerous inconsistencies and a lack of theoretical clarity of the role inequality plays in the study of urban violence. In fact, the inconsistencies were so widespread that I felt it important to document them in this book (see chapter 3). Overall, there are challenges to overcome in the study of race, urban violence, and the crime drop that require us to broaden (not narrow) our definitions.

In short, a number of structural facets—both historic and contemporary—link race and gender to societal institutions. In this book I draw from various literatures that inform this notion and then apply these ideas in areas where they have not yet reached, namely, the current debate about the crime drop. What results is a book that deals with how inequalities, such as the stratified nature of labor markets and racial discrimination in housing, are produced and what form they take when contributing to the change in urban violence over time. Simply put, the book offers a look into this larger dynamic process that links race, urban inequality, and crime.

The Method

To examine trends, I cover major decade-to-decade changes in structural features of American cities in the period from 1980 to 2003. These trends are sometimes shown through maps, figures, or tables containing raw data, percentages, or change scores. Although the question of how to delimit labor markets and crime geographically may never be answered to anyone’s satisfaction, the unit of analysis is any America city with a population base of 100,000 or more residents. The choice of U.S. cities is made purposely (see a full description in chapter 5). Census data are used to capture the structural characteristics of cities, and efforts are made to conceptualize the local economy and to incorporate indicators that tap major industrial and economic shifts in U.S. cities. To be precise, various charts and tables present data from decennial time periods and information reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

In terms of displaying the changes in violence over time, researchers interested in crime trends are limited to two data sources for crime statistics: the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The strengths and weaknesses associated with these data sources have been well documented. In this book I use the UCR because it provides uninterrupted crime series data on offenders for U.S. cities. Specifically I draw from the Supplemental Homicide Files (SHF) because of the level of detail they provide on the characteristics of homicide victims and offenders. On the other hand, to overcome the problem of missing data, adjustments are made to the supplemental homicide data that make up the trends presented in this book. Missing data on the race of offenders is a widely known issue in the supplemental homicide files, and ignoring the issue of missing data was not an option (Messner, Raffalovich, and McMillan 2001; Williams and Flewel-ling 1987). Computations of all measures are outlined in the Technical Appendix, and all measures are based on original data.

Summary of Chapters and Key Findings

In this book I explore the structural characteristics of American cities that are influential to understanding the crime drop, particularly the way race and gender intersects with the local economy when contributing to the fluctuations in violence over time. Although undoubtedly a number of important factors are not explored here, I am particularly interested in incorporating dimensions of the new economy, as well as the old, into the study of the rise and fall in urban homicide rates. I argue that specific shifts in the U.S. economy, and, more directly, the embeddedness of race and gender in the urban economy, are plausible explanations for the crime drop. I build on existing literatures in stratification, economics, and criminology to fill this gap in the literature, and thus offer a dynamic view of race, urban inequality, and violence. Theoretical linkages are offered and statis...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Difference Race and Gender Makes
• 3 Structural Perspectives on Crime and Their Critics
• 4 Racial Stratification and the Local Urban Economy
• 5 Race, Urban Inequality, and the Changing Nature of Violence
• 6 Conclusion
• Technical Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author