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Explaining the Gaps in White, Black, and Hispanic Violence Since 1990

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Explaining the Gaps in White, Black, and Hispanic Violence Since 1990 ASRXXX10.1177/0003122416635667American Sociological ReviewLight and Ulmer 6356672016 American Sociological Review 2016, Vol. 81(2) 290 –315 Explaining the Gaps in White, © American Sociological Association 2016 DOI: 10.1177/0003122416635667 Black, and Hispanic Violence http://asr.sagepub.com since 1990: Accounting for Immigration, Incarceration, and Inequality Michael T. Lighta and Jeffery T. Ulmerb Abstract While group differences in violence have long been a key focus of sociological inquiry, we know comparatively little about the trends in criminal violence for whites, blacks, and Hispanics in recent decades. Combining geocoded death records with multiple data sources to capture the socioeconomic, demographic, and legal context of 131 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States, this article examines the trends in racial/ethnic inequality in homicide rates since 1990. In addition to exploring long-established explanations (e.g., disadvantage), we also investigate how three of the most significant societal changes over the past 20 years, namely, rapid immigration, mass incarceration, and rising wealth inequality affect racial/ ethnic homicide gaps. Across all three comparisons—white-black, white-Hispanic, and black- Hispanic—we find considerable convergence in homicide rates over the past two decades. Consistent with expectations, structural disadvantage is one of the strongest predictors of levels and changes in racial/ethnic violence disparities. In contrast to predictions based on strain theory, racial/ethnic wealth inequality has not increased disparities in homicide. Immigration, on the other hand, appears to be associated with declining white-black homicide differences. Consistent with an incapacitation/deterrence perspective, greater racial/ethnic incarceration disparities are associated with smaller racial/ethnic gaps in homicide. Keywords homicide, racial/ethnic inequality, mass incarceration Sociologists have long viewed group dispari- attainment (Hauser 1993). This work, however, ties in criminal violence as important indicators has not been paralleled for Hispanics in the of assimilation and reflections of broader pat- United States. Despite considerable research on terns of stratification (Du Bois [1899] 1967). trends in Hispanic assimilation in various other For this reason, a substantial amount of research on racial disparities in violent crime (for a review, see Peterson, Krivo, and Hagan 2006) aPurdue University has coincided with a wealth of studies on the bPennsylvania State University trends in racial inequality across broad mea- sures of well-being, including income and fam- Corresponding Author: Michael T. Light, 700 W. State Street, Purdue ily structure (Bloom 2015), residential integra- University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 tion (Massey and Denton 1993), and educational Email: [email protected] Light and Ulmer 291 social domains (Alba and Nee 2003), there has In this article we go beyond prior research been no systematic examination of the long- by developing the first longitudinal, nation- term patterns of violent crime for Hispanics ally representative dataset that includes race/ relative to non-Hispanic whites and African ethnicity-specific measures for homicides and Americans.1 As a result, we know compara- theoretically relevant indicators from 1990 to tively little about whether racial/ethnic gaps in 2010. Combining geocoded death records criminal violence have converged or widened provided by the Centers for Disease Control in recent decades, or the relative influence of (CDC) with multiple data sources capturing racial/ethnic inequality in social, economic, and relevant features of the socioeconomic, demo- demographic conditions in driving these trends. graphic, and legal context of 131 of the larg- This dearth of longitudinal research is con- est metropolitan areas, our study is the first to sequential given the scale of recent changes to provide even descriptive information on the the racial/ethnic composition of the United trends in racial and ethnic gaps in criminal States. Since 1990, Hispanics have become the violence over the past two decades. This is an largest minority group in the United States, important contribution given that homicide surpassing African Americans for the first time mortality plays a major role in racial dispari- in U.S. history. Between 1990 and 2010, the ties in life expectancy (Lariscy et al. 2013). U.S. Hispanic population has more than dou- We leverage these unique data to investi- bled, from 22.4 million to 50.5 million, gate the influence of three of the most signifi- accounting for the majority of total population cant societal changes over the past 20 growth since 2000 (Pew Research Center years—rapid immigration, mass incarcera- 2011). Moreover, increasing diversity has tion, and rising wealth inequality—on racial/ redefined the racial/ethnic composition of the ethnic inequality in homicide. While each of metropolitan United States. Between 1990 and these trends has been instrumental in the 2010, the white share of the population in the study of racial/ethnic stratification and assim- nation’s largest metropolitan areas decreased ilation processes generally, they have largely from 71 to 57 percent, while the Hispanic escaped contemporary inquiry in our under- share grew from 11 to 20 percent (Frey 2011). standing of the changes in racial/ethnic vio- Thus, a thorough empirical investigation into lence. Drawing from criminological theory the trends in criminal violence between whites, on social disorganization, strain/relative dep- blacks, and Hispanics over this period is timely rivation, and rational choice, we derive spe- and important. cific hypotheses about how these recent In addition, such an analysis offers an transformations have influenced the patterns important research setting for informing ongo- of racial/ethnic violence since 1990. ing debates regarding the extent to which dif- ferential exposure to criminogenic conditions PRIOR RESEARCH ON explains racial/ethnic differences in criminal violence—often referred to as the “racial RACIAL-ETHNIC VIOLENCE invariance” hypothesis. While some scholars The race gap in violence has produced a volu- argue that the weight of the evidence supports minous literature that almost exclusively uses the racial invariance thesis (Peterson and Krivo cross-sectional data to either (1) explain crime 2005), others suggest the racial invariance rates across communities with varying racial issue remains largely unsettled (Steffensmeier compositions or (2) estimate race-specific anal- et al. 2010). To date, however, research on this yses to test whether white and black crime rates topic has failed to examine the determinants of are affected by the same processes (for a review, the gaps in white, black, and Hispanic violent see Peterson and Krivo 2005). Despite this sub- crime over time. This is largely a function of stantial research attention, this body of work has data limitations, as ethnic identifiers are rarely elided a sustained focus on the actual determi- collected in official crime statistics. nants and trends in black-white differences in 292 American Sociological Review 81(2) violence over time. There are, however, two homicide gaps are greater in places where there notable exceptions. Vélez, Krivo, and Peterson are greater between-group differences in pov- (2003) use racially disaggregated homicide erty and female-headed households. However, offender rates for whites and blacks across 125 as the authors note, it remains to be seen whether large U.S. cities to evaluate the structural deter- their findings can be replicated beyond New minants of the racial violence gap in 1990. York and California. More recently, LaFree, Baumer, and O’Brien More importantly for our purposes, (2010) provided the first longitudinal assess- Ulmer, Harris, and Steffensmeier (2012) ment of the white-black gap in violence and found that racial differences in structural found substantial convergence in white-black disadvantage did not completely explain homicide arrest rates between 1960 and 2000. black-white and black-Hispanic gaps in However, with the rapidly increasing His- violent crime. This raises questions about panic population in the United States, Steffens- what additional macro-level factors or social meier and colleagues (2011) caution against changes might need to be considered to drawing strong inferences from contemporary account for such gaps. In addition, virtually research on the white-black gap in violent all of the research utilizing white, black, and crime for two reasons. First, Hispanics’ level Hispanic comparisons is cross-sectional, of violence tends to fall between white and focuses on only certain jurisdictions, does black rates (Steffensmeier et al. 2010). Second, not include data beyond the early 2000s, and crime-reporting programs often report His- overlooks some of the most noteworthy soci- panic arrestees as white. Combining Hispanics etal changes in recent years (e.g., mass and non-Hispanic whites thus limits our under- incarceration). As a result, we currently lack standing of ethnic involvement in crime, lead- a clear picture of the national trends in racial ing to inaccurate estimates of the true disparities and ethnic violence over the past two dec- in violence between whites and blacks. For ades, whether the same theoretical constructs example, using data from California and New are associated with changes in the racial/ York that have separate indicators for white, ethnic gaps
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