David Eitle

Racial Threat and Social Control: A Test of The Political, Economic, and Threat of Black Crime Hypotheses

The often observed association between the size of the black population and the amount of social control imposed on blacks has been interpreted as consistent with one of three conceptually distinct perspectives: (1) the political threat hypothesis, (2) the economic threat hypothesis, and (3) the threat of black crime hypothesis. Although these three hypotheses advance differing conceptualizations of threat, adjudicating between them has proven difficult. The current study uses county-level data drawn from South Carolinas National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), race-specific voting data, and demographic data to investigate the validity of each of these racial threat hypotheses. Results from a pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis show that black-on-white crime has a substantive positive effect on black arrest levels. In contrast, no such effect is observed for black-on-black crime. These findings taken together furnish strong support for the threat of black crime hypothesis. The curvilinear relationship between the ratio of black-to-white votes cast in a general election and black arrest levels hypothesized by the political threat hypothesis does not hold for the data analyzed. Additionally, we find no empirical support for the economic threat hypothesis. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Exposure to Community Violence and Young Adult Crime: The Effects of Witnessing Violence, Traumatic Victimization, and Other Stressful Life Events

Evidence has accumulated that young people in America are witnesses to considerable violence at home and in the community. This study is the first to examine the association between witnessing community violence and criminal behavior in a representative sample of young adults. In addition, the authors consider whether receiving traumatic news, witnessing domestic violence, experiencing accidents, and being the direct victim of domestic and community-based violence are independently associated with young adult crime. The results indicate that recent exposure to violence in the community along with a history of receiving traumatic news, direct victimizations in the community, recent life events, and associations with criminal peers increase the risk for young adult criminal offending. The implications of these results are discussed.

The Influence of Mandatory Arrest Policies, Police Organizational Characteristics, and Situational Variables on the Probability of Arrest in Domestic Violence Cases

Prior research into factors predicting arrest in domestic violence cases is limited in three regards: (a) no examination of whether mandatory arrest policies are associated with increased risk of arrest across multiple jurisdictions; (b) little consideration of whether police organizational characteristics influence arrest in such cases; and (c) little examination of whether mandatory arrest policies moderate the influence of extralegal characteristics on arrest risks. Using year 2000 data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System and the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics, a nonlinear hierarchical modeling procedure was employed to evaluate the predictive utility of situational and organizational factors associated with arrest probability in domestic violence cases. The results suggest that, in domestic violence cases, mandatory arrest policies predict arrest and modestly reduce the significance of race as a predictor of arrest. The results are interpreted as supporting a constrained rational model of policing.

Inequality, Segregation, and the Overrepresentation of African Americans in School Suspensions

Using school, district, and county data from the State of Florida Department of Education and the U.S. Census, we examine the relationship between school segregation and the overrepresentation of black students among those suspended. We explore two competing hypotheses about the nature of this relationship: (1) an overall racial inequality hypothesis that suggests schools located in districts with relatively high levels of segregation among students also have the largest black suspension imbalances and (2) a resegregation hypothesis that suggests schools situated in relatively highly segregated districts have the lowest rates of black imbalances in suspension. Results from a multilevel analysis indicated that higher levels of school segregation corresponded with lower levels of the black suspension imbalance and provided support for the resegregation hypothesis.

Accountability in a Postdesegregation Era: The Continuing Significance of Racial Segregation in Florida’s Schools:

In the wake of both the end of court-ordered school desegregation and the growing popularity of accountability as a mechanism to maximize student achievement, the authors explore the association between racial segregation and the percentage of students passing high-stakes tests in Florida’s schools. Results suggest that segregation matters in predicting school-level performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test after control for other known and purported predictors of standardized test performance. Also, these results suggest that neither recent efforts by the state of Florida to equalize the funding of education nor current efforts involving high-stakes testing will close the Black-White achievement gap without consideration of the racial distribution of students across schools.

STRESS EXPOSURE, RACE, AND YOUNG ADULT MALE CRIME

A recent revision of strain theory, Robert Agnews (1992) general strain theory (GST), has stimulated research testing its principles, central of which is the notion that exposure to stressors is positively associated with criminal behavior. The present research extends prior scholarship in three important ways: (1) assessing the role that race and ethnicity play in understanding the stress-crime relationship, (2) testing GST principles on an underexamined group of crime prone individuals (i.e., young adults), and (3) examining the stress-crime association with a substantially more comprehensive set of measures of stressors than prior evaluations. Central to our findings is the result that racial differences in criminal involvement are largely reducible to exposure differences, with blacks typically exposed to significantly more stressful events over their lifetimes than members of other racial/ethnic groups.

Exploring a source of deviance-producing strain for females: Perceived discrimination and general strain theory

Abstract While the oppression of women has been held by many feminist criminologists to be at the core of female crime, little research had explored the link between discrimination, generally, and gender-based discrimination, specifically, and female deviance. Using the framework of general strain theory (GST), this study used a sample of young adult females to explore whether self-reported measures of discrimination experiences were related to self-reported criminal activity and/or diagnoses of substance use disorders. Results indicated that a measure of major discrimination that included gender discrimination was a significant predictor of both crime and substance use disorders. These findings were interpreted as being supportive of GST and previous scholarship by other feminist criminologists.

The Deterrence Hypothesis Reexamined: Sports Participation and Substance Use among Young Adults

The widely held notion that sports participation reduces subsequent risk of substance use is evaluated with longitudinal data of a representative sample of youth when they were in their preteen and young adult years. Unlike previous inquiries into the deterrence hypothesis, the present study controls for other major factors previously found to be predictive of alcohol and drug use. Results of analyses revealed that contrary to the deterrence hypothesis, playing high school sports does not appear to be a protective factor that lowers ones involvement in young adult alcohol or drug use – with one exception. Subgroup analyses revealed that among blacks, the greater the extent of high school sports participation the less the risk of substance use. In direct contradiction to the deterrence hypothesis, playing high school sports was found to be positively associated with alcohol use for whites, even in the context of other major predictors of alcohol use. Further analyses revealed that the positive association between sports participation and alcohol use appeared to exist only for white males. The implications of these results are discussed.

School and County Characteristics as Predictors of School Rates of Drug, Alcohol, and Tobacco Offenses

Despite evidence that school factors are associated with differences in various types of student behavior, little research has explored the predictive utility of school factors for school-level substance offense rates. Using data from the State of Florida Department of Education and the Census, we explore the associations between school climate and school substance offense rates, controlling for county level characteristics. Results from a multilevel analysis show that school culture, school organization, and social milieu predict variation in school substance incident rate. We interpret the findings as consistent with research utilizing the “school culture/school effectiveness” model.

Segregation and School Violence

While research exploring the consequences of desegregation and resegregation for academic achievement and intergroup attitudes and behavior has been prolific, scant attention has been paid to the impact that school segregation differences has had on school violence. Using data from the state of Florida Department of Education and the U.S. Bureau of the Census, we attempt to adjudicate between competing hypotheses about the nature of a relationship between segregation and school violence: (1) that segregation is associated with increased school violence; and (2) that segregation is associated with decreased school violence, especially under conditions of racial inequality. Results from a multilevel analysis show that increased school district segregation has a substantive negative association with school violence, particularly in contexts of greater community inequality, consistent with Pettigrews (1971) observations about the contact hypothesis. The implications of these findings are discussed.