RACIAL INEQUALITY AND RACIALLY DISAGGREGATED HOMICIDE RATES: AN ASSESSMENT OF ALTERNATIVE THEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS*

This research considers the relationship between levels of racial inequality and homicide rates for a sample of 154 U.S. cities. We identfy four causal processes that have been cited in the theoretical literature to explain the link between racial inequality and criminal violence. These diflerent causal explanations imply distinctive relationships between racial inequality and different types of homicide rates disaggregated by the racial characteristics of victims and offenders. Accordingly, we examine the effects of racial inequality on racially disaggregated homicide rates, as well as on total rates. We also introduce factor scales to alleviate the common problem of multicollinearity. Our results reveal significant, positive coefficients for racial inequality in equations predicting total homicide rates and race-specific offending rates. These results offer greatest support for theoretical arguments emphasizing a generalized effect of racial inequality on the offending behavior of residents of metropolitan communities.     

David Hare's Fictional Politics

David Hare is Britain's leading political dramatist. His Gethsemane premiered in November 2008, amidst anticipation that the play would 'crucify' New Labour. Gethsemane is in fact one of a number of fictionalisations of New Labour produced since 1997. These works have generally held up the party under Tony Blair's leadership to unmitigated criticism. Gethsemane certainly took Blair's premiership to task. However, despite increasing popular cynicism about Westminster politicians, Hare also suggested that politics remains a potential means through which honourable ends might still be achieved. However, already primed by the prevailing hostility to New Labour encouraged by earlier fictionalisations, few of those who reviewed Gethsemane noted Hare's tentative message of hope.     

It’s People That Make Places

ON July 9, 2010, I paused on the Great Wall of China on the outskirts of Beijing, trying to imagine all the people who had stood in that spot before, feeling the same breeze and viewing the same horizon.     

STEREOTYPES AND DISPOSITIONS FOR CRIMINAL HOMICIDE

There exists disagreement in the existing literature with respect to the origins of differential police practices. Based upon observation of police work with traffic law violators, the present paper advances an organizationally sensitive analysis of police decision making. The essential interpretation is that police decision making in the context of traffic law violations is a function of relations between organizational norms and employee concerns with autonomy.