David Jacobs

The Determinants of Deadly Force: A Structural Analysis of Police Violence

Political or threat explanations for the states use of internal violence suggest that killings committed by the police should be greatest in stratified jurisdictions with more minorities. Additional political effects such as race of the citys mayor or reform political arrangements are examined. The level of interpersonal violence the police encounter and other problems in departmental environments should account for these killing rates as well. Tobit analyses of 170 cities show that racial inequality explains police killings. Interpersonal violence measured by the murder rate also accounts for this use of lethal force. Separate analyses of police killings of blacks show that cities with more blacks and a recent growth in the black population have higher police killing rates of blacks, but the presence of a black mayor reduces these killings. Such findings support latent and direct political explanations for the internal use of lethal force to preserve order.

The Political Sociology of the Death Penalty: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis

Despite the interest in the death penalty, no statistical studies have isolated the social and political forces that account for the legality of this punishment. Racial or ethnic threat theories suggest that the death penalty will more likely be legal in jurisdictions with relatively large black or Hispanic populations. Economic threat explanations suggest that this punishment will be present in unequal areas. Jurisdictions with a more conservative public or a stronger law-and-order Republican party should be more likely to legalize the death penalty as well. After controlling for social disorganization, region, period, and violent crime, panel analyses suggest that minority presence and economic inequality enhance the likelihood of a legal death penalty. Conservative values and Republican strength in the legislature have equivalent effects. A supplemental time-to-event analysis supports these conclusions. The results suggest that a political approach has explanatory power because threat effects expressed through politics and effects that are directly political invariably account for decisions about the legality of capital punishment

Inequality and Police Strength: Conflict Theory and Coercive Control in Metropolitan Areas.

Conflict theorists have frequently argued that differences in economic resources give elites the ability to control the coercive apparatus of the state. Pronounced economic differences also provide elites with a strong need to maintain order so that ongoing relationships will not be disturbed. Because a strong police force is the most direct way to maintain order, one logical implication of conflict theory is that law enforcement personnel should be most numerous in metropolitan areas where differences in economic resources are greatest. Cross-sectional analyses of large SMSAs in 1960 did not always support this hypothesis. But when data from 1970 were analyzed the results invariably showed that unequal metropolitan areas were likely to have more police and other law enforcement personnel.

Toward a Political Model of Incarceration: A Time-Series Examination of Multiple Explanations for Prison Admission Rates

This study examines yearly shifts in prison admissions since 1950. The effects of political and economic determinants are investigated with measures of economic inequality, political variables, and unemployment. The delayed effects of broken families are measured with a lagged moving average of out-of-wedlock births. The findings show that inequality due to the presence of the rich and past out-of-wedlock birth rates matter, but unemployment is not related to prison admissions. The strength of the Republican Party and a presidential election year dummy also explain shifts in incarcerations. The results suggest that earlier work omitted theoretically important explanations.

Vigilantism, Current Racial Threat, and Death Sentences

Capital punishment is the most severe punishment, yet little is known about the social conditions that lead to death sentences. Racial threat explanations imply that this sanction will be imposed more often in jurisdictions with larger minority populations, but some scholars suggest that a tradition of vigilante violence leads to increased death sentences. This study tests the combined explanatory power of both accounts by assessing statistical interactions between past lynchings and the recent percentage of African Americans after political conditions and other plausible effects are held constant. Findings from count models based on different samples, data, and estimators suggest that racial threat and lynchings combine to produce increased death sentences, but the presence of liberal political values explains the absence of death sentences. These findings both confirm and refine the political version of conflict theory because they suggest that the effects of current racial threat and past vigilantism largely directed against newly freed slaves jointly contribute to current lethal but legal reactions to racial threat.

The Political Context of Sentencing: An Analysis of Community and Individual Determinants

Most studies of jail or prison sentence length focus on whether offender characteristics produce sentencing differentials after legal effects have been controlled, but the findings in the literature have not been consistent, probably because most studies have been based on a few jurisdictions. To see if political effects explain these discrepancies, this study of 337 jurisdictions in seven states analyzes interaction effects between external political influences and offender attributes after holding constant multiple individual and environmental factors. To adjust for censoring, Tobit is used to analyze the length of sentences, while state differences are held constant with state-specific dummy variables. When interaction terms are not included, the results are consistent with prior research. But the inclusion of political interactions produces findings suggesting that African Americans and males receive longer sentences when local courts are embedded in conservative political environments where a law-and-order presidential candidate received more votes. These results support theoretical claims that punishment is an intensely political process.

Interracial conflict and interracial homicide : Do political and economic rivalries explain white killings of blacks or black killings of whites?

What factors lead to interracial killings? Because racial conflict explanations have been overlooked in the previous literature, this article studies the determinants of disaggregated interracial killing rates in 165 U.S. cities by testing economic, political, and social control accounts. After holding the probability of interracial contacts and the total murder rate constant, the results show that cities with a black mayor and greater economic competition between the races have more white killings of blacks. The same hypotheses explain black killings of whites, but these killings are less likely in cities with black mayors. Police department size does not explain white killings of blacks, but cities with larger departments have fewer black killings of whites. The findings suggest that economic rivalries and contests for political influence lead to greater interracial violence.

Inequality and Police Use of Deadly Force: An Empirical Assessment of a Conflict Hypothesis

Conflict theorists assume that force or its threat is the fundamental element that holds unequal societies together. Because conflict theorists also hold that the states monopoly of violence is controlled by those who benefit from inequality, it follows that the control agents of the state should be more likely to use extreme force when economic inequality is most pronounced. This hypothesis was tested with data on the number of killings committed by policemen in the American states. After controlling for six additional explanations, we found that the police were most likely to use deadly force in the most unequal states. The amount of violent crimes and riots and the percentage change in population also predicted these lethal events. But the major implication of our findings is that a hypothesis derived from confict theory does predict the amount of police-caused homicides.

Political Opportunities and African‐American Protest, 1948–19971

Some contend that political opportunity theory is ad hoc, lacks clear measurement, and fails to distinguish opportunities from other conditions that contribute to protest. Others argue that the idea of “expanding opportunities” needs to be balanced by consideration of political threats. An annual time‐series approach is used to examine the frequency of African‐American protest in the United States from 1948 to 1997. Evidence of expanding opportunities created by divided government, strong northern Democratic Party allies, and, during the 1950s, Republican presidential incumbents responding to Cold War foreign policy constraints is found. African‐American congressional representation provides routine political access, which reduces protest. The evidence also supports explanations based on collective grievances stemming from black/white income inequality, Vietnam War deaths, and low‐to‐middle black unemployment.

Ideology, Social Threat, and the Death Sentence: Capital Sentences across Time and Space

Capital punishment is the most severe criminal penalty, yet we know little about the factors that produce jurisdictional differences in the use of the death sentence. Political explanations emphasize conservative values and the strength of more conservative political parties. Threat accounts suggest that this sentence will be more likely in jurisdictions with larger minority populations. After controlling for many explanations using two-equation count models, the results show that larger numbers of death sentences are probable in states with greater membership in conservative churches and in states with higher violent crime rates. The findings suggest that political conservatism, a stronger Republican party, and racial threat explain whether a state ever used the death sentence, but these hypotheses do not account for the number of death sentences beyond one. By highlighting the explanatory power of public ideologies, these findings support political explanations for the harshest criminal punishment.