The specter of discrimination: Fear of interpersonal racial discrimination among adolescents in Chicago

This analysis examines fear of interpersonal racial discrimination among Black, Hispanic, and White adolescents. The extent and correlates of these concerns are examined using survey data from the Project for Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. Borrowing from the fear-of-crime literature, the contact hypothesis, and group threat theory, several hypotheses are developed linking discrimination fear to direct personal experience with discrimination, indirect or vicarious experience, and environmental signals of discrimination. Results show that about half of Blacks and Hispanics have feared discrimination in the past year. Multivariate results indicate that fear is most likely if one has experienced victimization first-hand and when one's parent is affected by discrimination. Further, a larger presence neighborhood outgroups produces greater fear. Overall, discrimination fear constitutes an additional obstacle for minority adolescents as they transition to adulthood. The phenomenon warrants increased scholarly attention and represents a fruitful avenue for future research.     

Do theories of crime or violence explain race differences in delinquency?

We examine race differences in delinquency using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. We use a new method that permits an examination of offense specialization. We argue that an examination of offense patterns provides an opportunity for testing theoretical explanations of race effects. If race differences in violent crime reflect race differences in serious crime, then theories of crime can explain race effects. Otherwise, theories of violence are needed to explain the phenomenon. Our results suggest that black adolescents have higher rates of violence, particularly armed violence, but they do not have higher rates of serious (or minor) property or drug crime. Race differences in violence are generally stronger for adolescents who would otherwise be at lower risk: girls and adolescents from educated and intact families. Puerto Rican adolescents also have higher rates of violence than Anglos, but other Hispanic groups do not. We conclude with a discussion of the implication of the empirical literature (including our results) for various theoretical explanations of race differences in violence.     

Disentangling the reciprocal relationship between change in crime and racial/ethnic change

Prior research has found that racial/ethnic change and residential instability are positively related to neighborhood crime. However, the process of racial/ethnic change differentially influences crime above and beyond residential instability. While both processes affect crime through the disruption of existing social ties, racial/ethnic change has additional consequences for crime by heightening racial/ethnic tensions and undercutting cross-group interactions. This means racial/ethnic change is a different process than residential instability, and suggests that neighborhoods experiencing high rates of instability and high rates of racial/ethnic change may be particularly susceptible to crime. Therefore, we examine the influence of racial/ethnic compositional change on change in crime across different levels of residential instability. Further, we argue that demographic change and crime may be influencing each other simultaneously: increases in the crime rate and racial/ethnic compositional change impact each other at the same time. To capture this process, we employ a structural equation model (SEM) that accounts for the reciprocal and simultaneous relationship between racial/ethnic change and violent and property crime rates in Los Angeles, California between 1990 and 2000. We also account for the influence of change in spatially proximate communities. Results show robust evidence that increases in racial/ethnic change contributes to greater violent and property crime rates, but the reciprocal influence of crime on racial/ethnic change is contingent upon the degree to which a neighborhood is experiencing residential instability and crime type.     

Patterns of local segregation: Do they matter for neighborhood crime?

In this paper, we extend recent research on the spatial measurement of segregation and the spatial dynamics of urban crime by conceptualizing, measuring, and describing local segregation by race–ethnicity and economic status, and examining the linkages of these conditions with levels of neighborhood violent and property crime. The analyses are based on all 8895 census tracts within a sample of 86 large U.S. cities. We fit multilevel models of crime that incorporate measures of local segregation. The results reveal that, net of city-level and neighborhood characteristics, White–Black local segregation is associated with lower violent and property crime. In contrast, local segregation of low income from high income households is connected with higher crime, particularly neighborhood violence.     

The immigration–crime relationship: Evidence across US metropolitan areas

Despite popular commentary claiming a link between immigration and crime, empirical research exploring this relationship is sparse. Especially missing from the literature on immigration and crime is a consideration of how immigration affects rates of crime at the macro-level. Although individual-level studies of immigrant criminality and victimization tend to demonstrate that immigrants typically engage in less crime than their native-born counterparts, the effect of immigration on aggregate criminal offending is less clear. In this research, we attempt to address this weakness in the literature by examining the effects of aspects of immigration on crime rates in metropolitan areas. We combine 2000 US Census data and 2000 Uniform Crime Report data to explore how the foreign-born population influences criminal offending across a sample of metropolitan areas. After controlling for a host of demographic and economic characteristics, we find that immigration does not increase crime rates, and some aspects of immigration lessen crime in metropolitan areas.     

劳动力市场状况与犯罪:理论、仿真与浙江经验

劳动力市场状况与犯罪的关系是犯罪经济学最核心的研究主题之一.基于浙江28个县1980年到1989年的面板数据,本文对劳动力市场状况影响犯罪供给的机理和效应展开了详细的定性定量分析.双侧固定效应模型的估计结果显示:(1)工资差距每上升一个百分点,一般刑事犯罪率将平均上升0.15％；(2)相比侵财犯罪,暴力犯罪对工资收入差距扩大的弹性更大；(3)刑罚威慑弱化和快速的城市化是20世纪80年代后期浙江犯罪率显著攀升的重要原因.以上估计结果对犯罪供给方程估计中存在的不可观测的异质性、遗漏变量及样本选择等典型的内生性问题保持稳健,因而,为国内外犯罪经济学的实证研究提供了新证据,对我国转型期犯罪治理公共政策制定存在相应的参考价值.     

Race, crime, and Republican strength: Minority politics in the post-civil rights era

This investigation assesses the relationships between racial threat and partisan dominance in state legislatures with tests of interactive hypotheses. The findings show that historically contingent expectations derived from racial threat theory, Republican law and order campaign appeals, and fundamentalist strength account for Republican strength in the legislatures. Two-way fixed-effects estimates based on pooled time-series analyses of 799 state-years in the post-civil rights era show that the percentage of Republicans in the state legislatures grew after increases in African American presence and the violent crime rates. The combined effects of a growth in African American and fundamentalist populations also account for increased Republican seats in these bodies. Statements by Republican campaign officials on how they deliberately used mass resentments against minorities to gain votes provide evidence about the intervening links between minority threat, the menace posed by high violent crime rates, and increased Republican strength in the state legislatures.     

Did send-down experience benefit youth? A reevaluation of the social consequences of forced urban–rural migration during China’s Cultural Revolution

During China’s Cultural Revolution, a large proportion of urban youth were forced to go to the countryside as a result of the state’s “send-down” policy. Past research has been ambivalent about the long-term social consequences for the Chinese youth who experienced send-down. Some scholars have suggested that the send-down experience may have yielded beneficial effects. To test this claim, we analyze data from the Survey of Family Life in Urban China, which we conducted in three large cities in 1999. Questions available in this data set allow us to ascertain the send-down experience of both the respondent and a sibling and educational attainment at the times of send-down and return. Our analyses of the new data show that the send-down experience does not seem to have benefited the affected Chinese youth. Differences in social outcomes between those who experienced send-down and those who did not are either non-existent or spurious due to other social processes.     

The typification of Hispanics as criminals and support for punitive crime control policies

The Hispanic population is now the largest and fastest growing minority in the United States, so it is not surprising that ethnic threat linked to Hispanics has been associated with harsher crime control. While minority threat research has found that individuals who associate blacks with crime are more likely to support harsh criminal policies, the possibility that this relationship exists for those who typify Hispanics as criminal has yet to be examined. Using a national random sample, this study is the first to use HLM to find that perceptions of Hispanics as criminals do increase support for punitive crime control measures, controlling for various individual and state influences. Moderated and contextual analyses indicate this relationship is most applicable for individuals who are less apt to typify criminals as black, less prejudiced, less fearful of victimization, politically liberal or moderate, not parents, and living in states with relatively fewer Latin American immigrants.     

Business structure,ethnic shifts in labor markets,and violence: The link between company size,local labor markets,and non-Latino homicide

Combining several schools of thought, including the civic engagement thesis, we extend current research by linking three things at the county level; firm size, the ethnic composition of labor markets, and violent crime. Our results suggest that larger businesses (based on the average number of persons employed) are more likely to have an external orientation and long recruitment reach, and this is linked to ethnic shifts in labor markets toward Latino workers. Such shifts are in turn associated with high rates of homicide among non-Latinos. Through indirect effects modeling, we find that increases in Black homicide are linked to rises in concentrated poverty, while increases in White homicide are linked to changes in unemployment. We discuss the implications of our findings.     

虚拟世界中的真实恐怖——网络恐怖犯罪及其防范对策

网络社会被称为虚拟世界，恐怖分子可能利用网络的开放性、匿名性、隐蔽性特点以及网络的脆弱而实施恐怖犯罪活动。网络恐怖犯罪或者将网络作为其实施恐怖犯罪的手段，或者将网络视为其恐怖犯罪的攻击对象，其与传统的暴力性恐怖犯罪具有同样甚至更为严重的危害性，我们必须采取各种积极措施打击和防范网络恐怖犯罪。     

The persistence of skin color discrimination for immigrants

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination in employment on the basis of color is prohibited, and color is a protected basis independent from race. Using data from the spouses of the main respondents to the New Immigrant Survey 2003, this paper shows that immigrants with the lightest skin color earn on average 16-23% more than comparable immigrants with the darkest skin color. These estimates control for years of legal permanent residence in the US, education, English language proficiency, occupation in source country, Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, race, country of birth, as well as for extensive current labor market characteristics that may be themselves influenced by discrimination. Furthermore, the skin color penalty does not diminish over time. These results are consistent with persistent skin color discrimination affecting legal immigrants to the United States.     

非法处置查封、扣押、冻结的财产罪司法适用研究

非法处置查封、扣押、冻结的财产不仅侵犯了司法机关的权威和尊严,而且损害了法律的严肃性,社会影响甚烈,危害甚大。司法实践中有必要准确解读刑法的有关规定,划清其罪与非罪、此罪与彼罪的界限,以保证非法处置查封、扣押、冻结的财产案件的正确定性处理。而判断非法处置查封、扣押、冻结的财产罪是否有犯罪的未遂形态,就必须明确该罪是否属于结果犯、行为犯或者危险犯。如果该罪属于上述三种形态之一,则其当然存在犯罪的未遂形态;反之,如果该罪不属于上述三种犯罪形态,则其犯罪未遂形态也就不可能存在。     

从刑事诉讼目的角度看警检关系

西方各国刑事诉讼中的警检关系本质上是一种相互配合与协作的关系,以控制犯罪为直接目的。我国刑事诉讼中的警检关系既是一种互相配合的关系,又是一种监督关系,以实现控制犯罪和保障人权的双重目的。然而,从警检关系的实际运作来看,无论公安机关和检察机关互相配合,还是检察监督均未能达到理想效果,由此导致控制犯罪和保障人权的目的均未能充分实现。在笔者看来,警检关系难以实现控制犯罪和保障人权的双重目的,我国应以提高对犯罪的有效追诉为目标重构我国刑事诉讼中的警检关系。     

Job activities and personal crime victimization: Implications for theory

Theoreticians have used the concepts of lifestyle and routine activities to account for the occurrence of personal crime victimization. Research has not usually used direct measures of these concepts, however, instead relying on demographic variables such as age and sex as proxy indicators. This paper analyzes the relationship of various job activities (delivering passengers or goods, traveling out of town, dealing face-to-face with customers, and working irregular hours) to the risk of violent and theft-damage personal crime victimization, and to the risk of such victimization at work. Logistic regression models show that delivery of passengers or goods and dealing with the public are robustly associated with violent victimization. None of the four job activities are consistently associated with theft-damage victimization risk. The results illustrate the importance of using direct measures of life-style or routine activities to examine exposure to the risk of victimization. The findings also suggest the need to elaborate further the notion of exposure, and to develop a second generation of victimization theory.     

Comparative modeling approaches for understanding urban violence

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of three different modeling approaches for exploring structural theories of violence. Specifically, ordinary least squares regression, geographically weighted regression and data envelopment analysis will be utilized to evaluate violent crime. This type of analysis expands upon traditional theory testing by deepening our understanding of differences in crime generation and its underlying demographic and socio-economic stimuli via different methodological lenses. A case study for the city of Cincinnati, Ohio is presented and the results suggest that a combination of approaches is likely the best strategy for evaluating violence in urban areas.     

The optimism trap: Migrants’ educational choices in stratified education systems

Immigrant children's ambitious educational choices have often been linked to their families' high level of optimism and motivation for upward mobility. However, previous research has mostly neglected alternative explanations such as information asymmetries or anticipated discrimination. Moreover, immigrant children's higher dropout rates at the higher secondary and university level suggest that low performing migrant students could have benefitted more from pursuing less ambitious tracks, especially in countries that offer viable vocational alternatives. We examine ethnic minority's educational choices using a sample of academically low performing, lower secondary school students in Germany's highly stratified education system. We find that their families' optimism diverts migrant students from viable vocational alternatives. Information asymmetries and anticipated discrimination do not explain their high educational ambitions. While our findings further support the immigrant optimism hypothesis, we discuss how its effect may have different implications depending on the education system.     

Parks as crime inhibitors or generators: Examining parks and the role of their nearby context

Although neighborhood studies often focus on the presence of some particular entity and its consequences for a variety of local processes, a frequent limitation is the failure to account more broadly for the local context. This paper therefore examines the role of parks for community crime, but contributes to the literature by testing whether the context of land uses and demographics nearby parks moderate the parks and crime relationship. A key feature of our approach is that we also test how these characteristics explain crime in the park, nearby the park, and in other neighborhoods in the city with data from nine cities across the United States (N = 109,808 blocks). We use multilevel Poisson and negative binomial regressions to test our ideas for six types of street crime. Our findings show that nearby land uses and socio-demographic characteristics are a key driver of crime being located within the park or nearby the park. Our results also show a clear distance decay pattern for the impact of various land uses and socio-demographics nearby parks. The results emphasize a need for research to consider the broader socio-spatial context in which crime generators/inhibitors are embedded.     

Re-examining the relationship between Latino immigration and racial/ethnic violence

Whether immigration increases crime has long been a source of political debate and scholarly interest. Despite widespread public opinion to the contrary, the weight of evidence suggests the most recent wave of U.S. immigration has not increased crime, and may have actually helped reduce criminal violence. However, with recent shifts in immigrant settlement patterns away from traditional receiving destinations, a series of contemporary studies suggests a more complicated immigration-crime relationship, whereby Latino immigration is said to increase violence in newer immigrant destinations (but not in established destinations) and has varied effects for different racial/ethnic groups. With few exceptions, these more recent studies rely on cross-sectional analyses, thus limiting their ability to examine the longitudinal nexus between Latino immigration and violent crime. This study brings to bear the first longitudinal data set to test the relationship between immigration and racial/ethnic homicide in U.S. metropolitan areas between 1990 and 2010. Results from bivariate longitudinal associations and multivariate fixed effects models are contrary to recent findings – Latino immigration is generally associated with decreases in homicide victimization for whites, blacks, and Hispanics in both established and non-established immigrant destinations, though these associations are not significant in all cases.     

Income as a resilience factor for the impact of discrimination and institutional unfairness on minorities’ emotional well-being

This study investigated the impact of personal vs. institutional discrimination on the emotional well-being (EWB) of immigrant and ethnic minorities, and a possible protective mechanism of economic achievements that may buffer the negative effects of discrimination. Data were collected from the Israeli 2015 Social Survey. Immigrant minorities were those who came to Israel after 1980. Israeli Palestinians were regarded as an ethnic minority. The study showed that perceived unfairness and discrimination in public institutions, which were not necessarily directed towards individuals or their minority group, threatens EWB of minorities to an extent similar to that of personally experienced discrimination. Income moderated the effects of common and personal discrimination on EWB of immigrant and ethnic minorities, but not in the same way across the various groups. The study provides evidence that income may be a resilience factor, which buffers and compensates for the negative effect of discrimination on minorities’ EWB.