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The Effect of Race on Crime: a Multilevel Analysis

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The Effect of Race on Crime: a Multilevel Analysis University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2012 The Effect of Race on Crime: A Multilevel Analysis Wanjun Cui [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Criminology Commons Recommended Citation Cui, Wanjun, "The Effect of Race on Crime: A Multilevel Analysis. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2012. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1286 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Wanjun Cui entitled "The Effect of Race on Crime: A Multilevel Analysis." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Sociology. Stephanie A. Bohon, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Ben Feldmeyer, Lois Presser, Russell Zaretzki Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) THE EFFECT OF RACE ON CRIME: A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Wanjun Cui May, 2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all of the members of my committee, Dr. Stephanie A. Bohon, Dr. Ben Feldmeyer, Dr. Lois Presser, and Dr. Russell Zaretzki, for all of their help in the completion of this dissertation. I would like to express my sincere and deep gratitude to my mentor and dissertation chair Dr. Stephanie A. Bohon for her support and guidance during my years as a PhD student. She not only guided me through the most difficult times of my graduate school experience, but also gave me enormous support and encouragement and helped me discover my strengths. Her easy-going personality and excellent research ability have inspired me to find my own meaningful path in the academic world. I especially want to thank her for spending so much time and effort reading through and editing each chapter of my dissertation. Her valuable comments and feedback have greatly increased the quality of the content of my work, and her careful editing has also helped me to improve my written English communication ability. I cannot express how grateful I am to her. Without her support and faith in me I could not have accomplished so much. I also would like to thank Dr. Ben Feldmeyer for always being there whenever I needed help. He has inspired me to focus on race and crime with his own passion and enthusiasm for that topic. His guidance through the preparation for the specialty exam in criminology was invaluable to me, and he also provided me with many precious opportunities to sharpen my statistical analysis skills by allowing me to work on several research projects with him. He is always so patient with me and has given me valuable comments and feedback for every research paper I have sent him to read. I have learned so much from him and I am sure that the skills and knowledge he has conveyed will continue to aid me throughout my career. ii I would like to thank Dr. Lois Presser for her support of my dissertation and for giving me a lot of helpful comments during my dissertation proposal defense. Her comments and suggestions have been valuable to me and helped me toward the successful completion of my dissertation. Although I unfortunately never had any opportunity to take any class or work on a project with her, she has always helped me out whenever I needed, especially when as I prepared for my specialty exam in criminology. Because of her insightful feedback on my exam, I came to realize some of my knowledge gaps in criminology and have tried to close them. I would also like to thank Dr. Russell Zaretzki for helping me to improve my statistical analysis skills. I have taken two classes in statistics with him and he has been an invaluable resource for me outside of my own department. His guidance has not only exposed me to many different statistical theories and models, but also helped me learn how to apply them to the fields of sociology and criminology. The statistical tools I have learned from him are extremely valuable since they have helped me to become a well-trained quantitative researcher. I also want to express my gratitude to him for helping me to figure out the correct statistical model for my dissertation. Without his support, I could not have accomplished what I wanted in my dissertation. My deep appreciation also goes to my husband, David Nelson, and to my parents, Changan Cui and Guilan Fu. I especially want to thank my husband, who has been a constant source of support and encouragement ever since we met six years ago. He has not only helped me in many practical ways such as reading my work and offering comments and help with my English ability, but also offered unconditional love and encouragement. Without him, I could never have successfully finished my doctoral study. I am so grateful for having him in my life. I also want to thank my parents. It was because of their support that I was able to realize my iii dream and make it to the US for graduate school. Ever since then, they have always listened to my thoughts and given me encouragement. Even though we have been separated by a great distance for most of that time I have been in graduate school, they have always been close to my heart. It is because of their love that this dissertation was even possible in the first place. iv ABSTRACT Many studies have been carried out to examine the sources of racial disparities in crime. However, there are some limitations in most of those studies. One limitation is that the majority focus on black-white comparisons. Another limitation is that many primarily examine violent offending. In addition, most studies have solely relied on either contextual level or individual level explanations. My dissertation attempts to address these limitations in previous literature by using data from the first wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine racial disparities in different types of offenses among non-Latino whites, non-Latino blacks, non-Latino Asians, and Latinos. I use a multilevel linear method to model self-reported violent, property, and drug offenses when controlling both contextual level and individual level covariates that are drawn from social disorganization, anomie/strain, social learning, and social bond theory, simultaneously. Different from previous studies, I also use item response modeling to construct measures for my dependent variables such as violent offense. Findings from my dissertation show that there are some disparities in different types of offending between white and non-white adolescents. Furthermore, the gaps in different types of offending for Asian- white, black-white, and Latino-white comparisons are affected by different explanatory covariates. Demographic background such as immigration status, school bonds, and grades (social bond theory) seem to explain Asians’ lower level of reported violence in relation to whites. The gaps in violence between whites and blacks seem to stem from multiple sources. All aforementioned four theories seem to provide some explanations for this group comparison, but none of these theories explain away the differences in violent offending between them. For Latino-white gaps in violence, contextual effects such as concentration disadvantages account for the differences between these two groups. As for property and drug offending, the social v learning predictor peer delinquency seems to explain the gaps between whites and other races. Additionally, different covariates such as peer delinquency, school bond, and grades also have differential effects on different types of offense across different neighborhoods. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ................................................................... 11 2.1 Racial Disparities in Offending .............................................................................. 11 2.1.1 Racial Disparities in the UCR and NCVS data ................................................ 14 2.1.1 Racial Disparities in Self-Report Studies ........................................................ 20 2.2. Theoretical Frameworks ........................................................................................ 23 2.2.1 Social Disorganization Theory ........................................................................ 24 2.2.2 Anomie/Strain Theory ..................................................................................... 28 2.2.3 Social Learning Theory.................................................................................... 31 2.2.4 Social Bond Theory ......................................................................................... 33 2.3. Contextual Level Studies of Racial Disparities in Crime- The Significance of Contextual Effects ....................................................................................................................
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