Lance Hannon

The impact of light skin on prison time for black female offenders

Abstract There is a long history of social science research on the importance of race for determining life outcomes. However, there are relatively few social science studies on the importance of skin tone within racial groups. Some recent research has documented the quantifiable advantages associated with having a lighter skin shade, particularly in terms of occupational attainment and earnings among blacks. A handful of studies focusing on black men have also suggested that when authorities perceive offenders as having a lighter skin shade it translates into more lenient criminal justice outcomes. The present analysis extends this line of inquiry by examining how perceived skin tone (assessed by correctional officers) is related to maximum prison sentence and actual time served for over 12,000 black women imprisoned in North Carolina between 1995 and 2009. Controlling for several factors, the results indicated that black women deemed to have a lighter skin tone received more lenient prison sentences and served less time behind bars.

Poverty, Delinquency, and Educational Attainment: Cumulative Disadvantage or Disadvantage Saturation?

Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) were analyzed to test two competing hypotheses regarding how poverty affects the relationship between delinquency and educational attainment. The cumulative-disadvantage perspective argues that poor youth suffer greater consequences for their involvement in delinquency than middle- and upper-class youth in terms of their educational attainment. Contrary to this perspective, the disadvantage-saturation thesis predicts that delinquency is less con-sequential for the educational attainment of poor youth than it is for nonpoor youth. Results from ordinary least squares and logistic regression analyses support the latter hypothesis. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Neighborhood ecology and drug dependence mortality: an analysis of New York City census tracts.

Drug dependence mortality appears to be highly concentrated in certain disadvantaged populations and in certain disadvantaged areas. Using a relatively large sample of census tract data for New York City, 1991–1995 (N = 2,037), the present study examines the structural covariates of drug dependence mortality rates. Spatially lagged negative binomial regression analyses indicated considerable support for previous findings regarding the importance of poverty as a predictor of drug mortality. Furthermore, two variables especially relevant for the social disorganization and deviant opportunity perspectives in criminology exhibited significant independent effects: the neighborhood homeownership rate and the prevalence of boarded-up housing. The results support various policy initiatives concerned with the relationship between neighborhood environment and public health.

Diversity, Racial Threat and Metropolitan Housing Segregation

Previous studies have shown that as the percent black or percent Hispanic grows, that group’s residential segregation from whites tends to increase as well. Typically, these findings are explained in terms of white discriminatory reaction to the perceived threat associated with minority population growth. The present analysis examines whether these racial threat effects depend on the extent of racial and ethnic diversity in an area. This possibility is tested by estimating otherwise standard models of black-white and Hispanic-white segregation using metropolitan area data from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. censuses. Results from robust regression analyses strongly support the prediction for each of the white-minority pairs: the racial threat effect is significantly diminished in areas with greater multi-ethnic diversity.

The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Poverty

During the past 30 years, U.S. poverty has remained high despite overall economic growth. At the same time, incarceration rates have risen by more than 300%, a phenomenon that many analysts have referred to as mass incarceration. This article explores whether the mass incarceration of the past few decades impeded progress toward poverty reduction. Relying on a state-level panel spanning 1980 to 2004, the study measures the impact of incarceration on three poverty indexes. Estimates are generated using instrumental variable techniques to account for possible simultaneity between incarceration and poverty. The evidence indicates that growing incarceration has significantly increased poverty, regardless of which index is used to gauge poverty. Indeed, the official poverty rate would have fallen considerably during the period had it not been for mass incarceration.

Violent Crime in African American and White Neighborhoods: Is Poverty's Detrimental Effect Race-Specific?

ABSTRACT The social disorganization and anomie perspectives generally suggest that povertys criminogenic effect is racially invariant. These perspectives imply that policies that alleviate economic deprivation will equally reduce rates of violent crime in neighborhoods that are predominately white and neighborhoods that are predominately black. In contrast, several social commentators have suggested that alleviating poverty will be a relatively ineffective crime reduction strategy in predominately black areas. Existing empirical research on this issue has been mostly at the city level, and almost entirely cross-sectional. The present study examines potential racial differences in the longitudinal relationship between neighborhood poverty and violent crime rates. We use iteratively reweighted least squares, a robust regression technique, to estimate race-specific effects for Cleveland census tracts, 1990–2000. The results are supportive of the racial invariance hypothesis. Reductions in neighborhood poverty appear to produce similar reductions in violent crime in white and black neighborhoods.

The truly disadvantaged and the structural covariates of fire death rates

Abstract The present study investigates the social and demographic correlates of fire death rates for large metropolitan counties (N=199). Data were derived from the 1990 census and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Multiple regression analyses revealed that age of housing, prevalence of mobile homes, and the proportion of the population renting had significant independent effects on fire death rates. Furthermore, the results indicated a significant interaction between the proportion of the population that is African American and median family income. The combination of low income and a high proportion of African Americans was related to fire death rates in a multiplicative rather than additive way. That is, the combination of low income and high proportion of African Americans appears to be associated with extremely high fire death rates, much more so than would be predicted by simply summing the two risk factors together. The results are discussed in relation to cumulative disadvantage theory. It is argued that the relationship between race and fire death is the product of both racial disparities in income and the geographic concentration of multiple disadvantages.

The Changing Relationship Between Unemployment and Suicide

The relationship between unemployment and suicide has changed over time and in particular during the Great Recession. Using state-level panel data covering the years 1979-2010, the study indicates that unemployments impact was insignificant during the first half of the sample period, but was highly significant during the second half. In addition, while the impact has generally become stronger over recent decades, it fell during the Great Recession although remained significant. Evidence suggesting that increased economic insecurity helps explain the growing sensitivity over time is offered. The models fit the data well, explaining up to 90% of the variation in state suicide rates.

The Legacy of Black Lynching and Contemporary Segregation in the South

Wacquant (2001) and others have argued that social control efforts directed at racial and ethnic minorities frequently shift institutional form and become more nuanced as societies modernize, even as the underlying function persists. This study examines the connection between southern lynching and housing segregation. We argue that legal, political, social and demographic changes in the south made lynching dysfunctional as a means of control. Among other more nuanced control mechanisms, modern housing segregation helped serve as a replacement. We test this proposition by relating historical southern black lynching rates to recent levels of segregation in southern MSAs. We find that an MSA’s historical lynching rate is positively and significantly linked to the MSA’s current segregation levels after accounting for standard determinants of segregation. Thus, segregation does not just occur generally throughout the south, but follows a very particular pattern based on past lynching rates. Our findings add to a growing literature on the legacy of lynching, such as studies examining contemporaneous variation in support for and use of capital punishment.

Race, victim precipitated homicide, and the subculture of violence thesis

Abstract The subculture of violence thesis suggests that African Americans are disproportionately likely to respond to minor transgressions with lethal force because of a culturally defined need to protect one’s reputation and a normative aversion to legal forms of dispute resolution. Using data on over 950 non-justifiable homicides from police files, the present study tests this hypothesis by examining race-specific patterns of victim precipitation (i.e., the victim’s role in initiating the homicide). If, as the theory suggests, African Americans are more likely to respond to minor affronts with lethal violence than Whites, then African American homicide incidents should have more victim precipitation, particularly in the form of minor acts of provocation. The results of the current analysis do not support this hypothesis and therefore are inconsistent with the notion that a unique subculture of violence among African Americans explains their disproportionately high levels of homicide victimization and offending.