Lesley Williams Reid

The Gender Gap in Fear: Assessing the Interactive Effects of Gender and Perceived Risk on Fear of Crime

In this research we explore the interaction between gender and perceived risk of victimization on levels of fear of crime. Much of the previous research on the effects of gender on fear of crime assumes that crimes are not gendered and that the effects of gender would operate the same regardless of type of crime. Challenging this assumption, we examine crimes that disproportionately victimize women or men. We find that there is greater nuance in both fear of crime and perception of risk when explored in this way. In fact, mens fear of crime actually surpasses womens fear at high levels of perceived risk for those crimes in which men are more likely to be victimized. We offer explanations for this finding, concluding that gendered perceptions of crime and victimization may drive these differences. In sum, our study indicates that future research on fear of crime must be even further attuned to the gender gap in fear.

Black-White Income Inequality and Metropolitan Socioeconomic Structure

ABSTRACT: We draw on leading theories about the structural causes of racial inequality in the US to investigate inter-metropolitan differences in white and black per capita income. The analysis, which is based on a sample of 112 metropolitan areas and uses 1990 census data, examines the influence of spatial, economic, and demographic factors on black-white income inequality. Our results show severe income inequality between blacks and whites in most metropolitan areas, with black per capita income being 55% of white per capita income, on average. We find that racial educational inequality and unemployment differences were the strongest predictors of racially based income inequality. We also find that metropolitan areas that are highly ranked on a business and financial dominance hierarchy have the most interracial income inequality. However, when a metropolitan area has a high level of manufacturing employment vis-a-vis low service employment it has less income inequality. We discuss the implications of these and other findings for theories about, and public policy regarding, urban inequality.

Hug drug or thug drug? Ecstasy use and aggressive behavior.

While clinical studies have established a link between aggression and ecstasy (3,4-methylenedioxymeth-amphetamine [MDMA]), no research has attempted to explore how this link manifests itself in behavioral outcomes. In this research we examine the effects of ecstasy on aggressive and violent behavior in a sample of active users. Data were collected from 260 ecstasy users in Atlanta, Georgia. Data analysis included ordered logit regression to examine the likelihood of engaging in aggressive behavior, controlling for key predictors of aggression independent of ecstasy use. Our results indicate that those with a higher prevalence of lifetime ecstasy use exhibit higher levels of aggressive and violent behavior. However, the effect of lifetime ecstasy use differs by levels of low self-control as a measure of propensity for aggression. Those who exhibit low self-control are more affected by ecstasy use than those who do not in terms of aggression. Our findings add an important dimension to our current knowledge about the relationship between aggression and ecstasy.

The Measurement of Suburban Sprawl: An Evaluation

We review and analyze how suburban sprawl has been conceptualized and measured in recent urban research. We find that indexes created to measure sprawl in metropolitan areas do so in three different ways. Some measures are based on residential population density, others specifically measure the extent of job or employment sprawl, and others consider sprawl a multidimensional land use phenomenon (and provide separate indexes for each dimension). Our analyses show that (1) most residential population density indexes reflect other dimensions of sprawl; (2) it is useful to think of metropolitan areas as positioned on two distinct dimensions of sprawl (i.e., centeredness and density–mixed land use); and (3) job sprawl and residential sprawl vary independently from each other. We provide recommendations regarding which sprawl measures are most appropriate for research applications.

LOW-QUALITY EMPLOYMENT CONCENTRATION AND CRIME: AN EXAMINATION OF METROPOLITAN LABOR MARKETS

Over the past two decades, numerous studies have investigated the effects of employment quality on crime. Many of these studies have investigated employment quality with regard to its effect on individual criminality. However, the quality of employment available in a labor market also affects crime at an aggregate level of analysis. Consequently, while the determinants of individual behavior are important, this article seeks to place these behaviors into a larger structural framework. This study contributes to the growing research on the work–crime link by relating differences in the quality of employment, on an aggregate level, to crime rates in metropolitan areas. Metropolitan areas with few quality jobs for less-educated workers have significantly higher rates of both violent and property crime.

Urban crime rates and the changing face of immigration: Evidence across four decades

ABSTRACT Research has shown little support for the enduring proposition that increases in immigration are associated with increases in crime. Although classical criminological and neoclassical economic theories would predict immigration to increase crime, most empirical research shows quite the opposite. We investigate the immigration-crime relationship among metropolitan areas over a 40 year period from 1970 to 2010. Our goal is to describe the ongoing and changing association between immigration and a broad range of violent and property crimes. Our results indicate that immigration is consistently linked to decreases in violent (e.g., murder) and property (e.g., burglary) crime throughout the time period.

Women, Race, and Ethnicity: Exploring Earnings Differentials in Metropolitan America

We draw on leading theories about the structural causes of inequality in the United States to explore inter–metropolitan differences in average earnings for white, black, Hispanic, and Asian women. Our analysis utilizes 2000 census data for a sample of 150 metropolitan areas to investigate the determinants of both womens median earnings and earnings’ inequality by race and ethnicity. We find substantial differences between the earnings of minority and white women across metropolitan areas, although the differences are not in the same direction for all groups. Among other findings, our results indicate: (1) The more retail trade and educational, health, and social service employment, the lower the earnings of most women; (2) the larger the immigrant population in an area, the higher the earnings of white and Asian, but not black or Hispanic women; and (3) residing in the South increases levels of inequality between black and white women. In summary, our results indicate that conventional predictors of aggregate earnings and earnings’ inequality operate differently for white, black, Hispanic, and Asian women at the metropolitan level. Structural characteristics of metropolitan areas all have some influence on womens economic outcomes; but those influences are consistent neither for the earnings of all groups of women nor for earnings’ inequality between groups of women.

The Drugs—Guns Relationship: Exploring Dynamic and Static Models

The relationship between the onset of drug use and the onset of criminality is an ongoing debate in criminology. This study adds to this debate by examining the effect of the age of onset of minor criminal behavior and substance abuse on later hard-drug use and criminal gun use. I use discrete-time event history models to examine the degree to which the onset of marijuana and alcohol use, as well as the onset of less serious forms of criminal involvement, hastens the onset of hard-drug use and criminal gun use. This research finds a progression of the severity of delinquent behavior from minor criminality and hard-drug use to criminal gun use, but little evident developmental progression from less serious delinquency to hard-drug use.

DISAGGREGATING THE EFFECTS OF RACIAL AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITY ON EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY EXECUTION RATES

This article examines how class inequality may have influenced the historical use of executions in the United States, both within the South and outside of the South. Specifically, this article asks whether executions acted as a mechanism to maintain an exploitative class system in the entire United States, just as lynching maintained a racial caste system in the South. Much of the literature on the historical determinants of macrolevel execution rates has examined these disparities in terms of racial inequality. This study demonstrates that racial inequality alone cannot account for the high number of executions that typified the early twentieth century United States and contends that it is important to expand our understanding of the effects of class inequality on both historical and contemporary trends in executions.

Examining the Relationship Between Media Consumption, Fear of Crime, and Support for Controversial Criminal Justice Policies Using a Nationally Representative Sample

According to cultivation theory, higher levels of crime-based media consumption result in an increased fear of crime. This study extends cultivation theory’s basic assertion by (a) creating a robust measure of media consumption based on three different factors and 38 original questions, (b) examining the direct and indirect effects of media consumption and fear of crime on support of criminal justice policies, and (c) using a nationwide sample. Using a sample of 1,311 participants, a combination of principal components analysis and structural equation modeling was used to examine these relationships. The results support the usefulness of a four-factor measure of media consumption in relationship to fear of crime. Results also reveal that fear of crime amplifies the effect of media consumption in creating support for three-strikes, death penalty, stand your ground, and open carry laws.