Casey T. Harris

Latino immigration and White, Black, and Latino violent crime: A comparison of traditional and non-traditional immigrant destinations.

Despite a resurgent interest in the macro-level relationship between Latino immigration and violent crime, research has overlooked an important shift in immigrant settlement whereby Latino migrants are increasingly bypassing traditional receiving communities in favor of non-traditional ones. Additionally, how the impact of this new settlement pattern on violence is conditioned by race and ethnicity has yet to be explored. Using year 2000 race/ethnic-specific arrest data for 326 California, New York, and Texas census places, the current study explores the relationship between recent Latino immigration and White, Black, and Latino violent crime across both traditional and non-traditional immigrant destinations. Results suggest that (1) recent Latino immigration is generally unassociated with violence across all communities, (2) recent Latino immigration is associated with decreased violence in traditional destinations but slightly increased violence in non-traditional destinations, and (3) there are important race/ethnic differences in these relationships. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Race and the religious contexts of violence: linking religion and White, Black, and Latino violent crime

Research has demonstrated that concentrated disadvantage and other measures are strongly associated with aggregate-level rates of violence, including across racial and ethnic groups. Less studied is the impact of cultural factors, including religious contextual measures. The current study addresses several key gaps in prior literature by utilizing race/ethnic-specific arrest data from California, New York, and Texas paired with religious contextual data from the Religious Congregations and Memberships Survey. Results suggest that, net of important controls, (1) religious contextual measures have significant crime-reducing associations with violence; (2) these associations are race/ethnic specific; and (3) religious contextual measures moderate the criminogenic association between disadvantage and violence for blacks. Implications for future research are discussed.

Enclaves of opportunity or "ghettos of last resort?" Assessing the effects of immigrant segregation on violent crime rates

A growing body of research indicates that immigration to the U.S. has crime-reducing effects on aggregate levels of violence, which researchers have often attributed to the protective and revitalizing effects of immigrants settling in spatially concentrated neighborhoods. However, recent scholarship suggests that growing shares of the foreign-born population are bypassing these segregated immigrant enclaves and are dispersing more widely to other urban neighborhoods. Moreover, some scholars suggest that spatially isolating immigrant populations may not always be protective, but could actually contribute to social problems like crime, particularly in disadvantaged contexts. The current study offers one of the first analyses exploring the way that segregation of immigrant populations (relative to the U.S.-born) is related to year 2000 violent crime rates for nearly 500 census places in California and New York. Results of our analysis reveal no direct link between immigrant segregation and macro-level violence, but instead show that these effects are highly contextualized and depend on the resources present in locales. Specifically, immigrant segregation contributes to violence in highly disadvantaged places but is linked to lower violence in areas with greater resources.

Structural Disadvantage and Latino Violent Offending Assessing the Latino Paradox in Context of Established Versus Emerging Latino Destinations

A long-standing finding in criminology is that structural disadvantage is a robust predictor of violence. Aligned with this finding is the racial invariance thesis, which states that the causes of violence are similar across racial/ethnic groups and that, in particular, disadvantage should be associated with higher rates of violence for all groups. Yet, a growing body of research on the Latino paradox challenges this assumption in finding that disadvantage has muted effects on Latino violence compared to other groups, while related literature qualifies this by suggesting that Latino experiences with violence qualitatively differ depending on the destination types in which Latinos settle. As such, the goal of this study is to reassess the Latino paradox in context of new patterns of Latino settlement. Highlighting differences in “contexts of reception,” we evaluate whether the relationship between disadvantage and Latino violence varies between established and emerging Latino destinations. Using 2001–2004 arrest data from a multistate database, we find that structural disadvantage is positively associated with Latino homicide and that this relationship is consistent across both emerging and established locales. Additionally, we find the relationship between disadvantage and homicide to be invariant across racial/ethnic groups regardless of the context of reception.

A Shot of Morality? Hispanic Immigration, Religious Contextual Characteristics, and Violence

Extant research often finds that the relative size of the Hispanic immigrant population is inversely associated with rates of crime at the macro level. Yet, few studies have empirically examined the indirect pathways through which Hispanic immigration might impact crime, especially sociocultural characteristics such as religious context. Utilizing data on known violent crimes from over 600 U.S. counties in 2010 paired with religious contextual data from the Religious Congregation and Membership Survey (RCMS), we observe that the presence of Hispanic immigrants is positively associated with community-level Catholic adherence, civically engaged religious adherence, and religious homogeneity that, in turn, are negatively associated with violent crime. Overall, religious contextual characteristics appear to significantly mediate the link between Hispanic immigration and violence at the macro level. Implications for the immigration-crime literature and broader macro-structural research are discussed.

“Mighty Like A River”: The Black Protestant Church and Violence in Black Communities1

ABSTRACT Little empirical attention has been devoted to the link between black Protestant adherence and crime, despite significant public and political interest in the correlates of offending in black communities, as well as both historical treatments of the black church and prominent sociological theories pointing to black Protestantism as working to mitigate social problems. Using 2010 Religious Congregations and Membership Survey and county-level crime data, we examine whether black Protestantism is negatively associated with homicide, robbery, burglary, and larceny, especially in more disadvantaged black communities. We conclude by discussing the ongoing public debate surrounding the future of the black Protestant church, and we suggest directions for future research.

Religion, Age, and Crime: Do Religious Traditions Differentially Impact Juvenile Versus Adult Violence?

A growing body of empirical research demonstrates that the relative presence of religious adherents at the community-level has important relationships with rates of crime and violence. Less understood is how adherence to specific religious traditions (e.g., evangelical Protestant, Catholic, mainline Protestant) is associated with rates of crime, especially across particular age groups toward which religious traditions devote varying degrees of structural and cultural resources. Using data from the Religious Congregations and Membership Survey and age-specific arrest data from the Uniform Crime Reporting program in 2010, the current study finds that the impact of religious adherence on crime varies by religious tradition and across juvenile versus adult crime. Specifically, evangelical Protestant adherence is negatively associated with juvenile but not adult violence, while Catholic adherence is associated with reduced adult but not juvenile violence, net of controls. Implications for research on religious contexts and crime, as well as policy, are discussed.

Predicting bias homicide across victim groups: A county-level analysis

Outside several notable exceptions, few studies have examined variations in bias crime occurrences across American communities, and how community-level factors may differentially shape violent and non-violent bias crimes across victim groups. Drawing from ecological theories of crime, this study asks, (1) what are the structural predictors of the likelihood of bias homicide occurrences? and (2) how do structural predictors differ across bias victim groups? To answer these questions, data on bias homicide are derived from the United States Extremist Crime Database (ECDB) for the years 1990 through 2014 and paired with socio- structural variables from the United States Census Bureau. Results are discussed relative to the goals of understanding where fatal bias crimes are more likely to occur as a means of informing law enforcement and policymakers interested in preventing and responding to this specific form of crime.

Race/Ethnicity and Measures of Violence at the Macro Level: Is Disadvantage Invariant Across Race-/Ethnicity-Specific Arrest, Victimization, and Offending?

An abundance of scholarship has examined the racial invariance thesis positing that the causes of violence, especially markers of disadvantage, are similar across racial/ethnic groups. More recentl...

Revisiting Violence in New Destinations: Exploring the Drop in Latino Homicide Victimization in Emerging Immigrant Communities, 2000 to 2010

ABSTRACT The turn of the twentieth century brought important demographic shifts among Latinos, including increasing settlement of both foreign-born and domestic Latinos into “new destination” regions and communities with little previous exposure to such populations. In turn, some scholars find higher rates of Latino victimization in these new destination communities, but there is little empirical research exploring whether and how these same locales fare today. Our goal is to address this gap in the literature by examining how lethal violence against Latinos in new immigrant destination communities has changed over the 2000 to 2010 decade. Using data from the National Vital Statistics System, we construct hybrid fixed- and random-effects models to examine the predictors of changes in Latino homicide victimization over time. Results suggest that (1) despite the turmoil of the Great Recession, new destinations experienced a sizable drop in Latino victimization, (2) this drop has resulted in new destinations now having lower levels of Latino victimization than other destination types, and (3) 70% of this change is attributable to changes in Latino family structure, including married and extended families, as well as changes in language use in new destinations. We conclude by discussing our findings and their implications for researchers and policymakers.