BEYOND THE BELL CURVE: COMMUNITY DISADVANTAGE AND THE EXPLANATION OF BLACK‐WHITE DIFFERENCES IN ADOLESCENT VIOLENCE*

Disproportionate involvement in violent behavior among African American, versus white, adolescents is a major arena of debate in the social sciences. The individual difference approach draws attention to verbal ability as an explanation of black‐white differences in violence. Sociological theories stress variation in community and family socioeconomic disadvantage. We contrast these causal images of racial differences in serious violence using the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health and contextual modeling. Results indicate that verbal ability has an indirect effect on violence through school achievement, but does not account for the greater involvement in violence among black adolescents. The analysis is most consistent with a sociological model that views the race‐violence link as a spurious outcome of community context.     

A FIELD EXPERIMENT ON INSURANCE FRAUD IN AUTO BODY REPAIR*

This article focuses on a particular form of white-collar crime–insurance fraud in auto body repair. Through the use of an experimental design, whether repair estimates were related to insurance coverage was investigated for a statewide representative sample of auto body repair shops in Massachusetts. The auto body repair estimates were significantly higher with insurance coverage than without, regardless of type of car, extent of damage, sex of driver, and location of shop. The implication of the findings is that the automobile insurance industry is very susceptible to fraudulent or illegal practices that take unfair advantage of consumers and insurance companies.     

Universal Applicability of Probation Risk-Assessment Instruments

A probation risk-assessment instrument developed by the State of Wisconsin is receiving wide use throughout the nation and has been recognized by the National Institute of Corrections as part of a "model system." However, this has been done without extensive validation on populations other than Wisconsin probationers and parolees. The validity of the instrument for a population of City of New York probationers is assessed in this study. It was found that many of the variables contained in the instrument did not predict risk for the sample. On this basis. the validation of risk instruments before they are fully adopted is recommended. In addition, based on an analysis of split halves of our sample, the general weakness of statistically derived models is noted.