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.     

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.     

RELIGIOSITY,PEER ASSOCIATIONS,AND ADOLESCENT MARIJUANA USE: A PANEL STUDY OF UNDERLYING CAUSAL STRUCTURES*

This paper examines the relationship between the religious factor and adolescent marijuana use. Using panel data from a sample of 264 high school youth, several three-wave, four-variable models derived from social learning theory and social control theory are estimated. Each model specifies causal links between measures of religious attitude and predispositions (religious commitment and an act-specific religious belief), involvement with marijuana-using friends, and self-reported marijuana use. The results provide evidence that the impact of religion is indirect through its influence on the variable Peer Associations. The findings also show the emergence of a direct effect of the act-specific belief on behavior over time. This effect is interpreted to be more a function of within-group attitude-behavior similarity due to social selection than to socialization to peer group standards. These findings extend rather than refute previous research which fails to control for the effects of peer influences.     

NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL CONTROL AND PERCEPTIONS OF CRIME AND DISORDER IN CONTEMPORARY URBAN CHINA*

By drawing on the two streams of Western literature on “neighborhood effects” and perceptions of neighborhood disorder adapted to the distinctive organizational infrastructure of neighborhoods in contemporary urban China, we examine the contextual effects of different forms of neighborhood social control (i.e., collective efficacy, semipublic control, public control, and market‐based control) on different types of perceived disorder (i.e., criminal activity, social disorder, physical disorder, and total disorder) across neighborhoods. The analyses are based on data collected in the year 2013 from a survey of approximately 2,500 households in 50 neighborhoods across the city of Tianjin. Collective efficacy as a form of informal control has a significant effect only for perceived social disorder. Public control as measured by the activities of neighborhood police stations has a significant contextual effect on all forms of perceived disorder, whereas the role of market‐based control as represented by contracted community services is limited to perceived physical disorder. Finally, semipublic control as measured by the activities of neighborhood committees significantly affects all forms of perceived disorder, but the direction of the effect is positive. We interpret this positive effect with reference to the complex processes surrounding the “translation” of neighborhood disorderly conditions into perceptions of disorder.     

TACKLING HEALTH INEQUALITIES IN POST‐DEVOLUTION BRITAIN: DO TARGETS MATTER?

Since devolution in 1998, many aspects of public policy in Great Britain have diverged between England, Scotland and Wales, including how targets and performance assessment are used in the National Health Service and local government. Health inequality is an example where all three countries have recognized a need to act but approaches to performance assessment differ. Based on interviews with senior managers, the complexity of health inequality as an object of local intervention is explored and compared. Despite contrasting approaches to targets, local discourses in all three countries had significant similarities. Health inequality had to compete against a preoccupation with improving access to acute services generally and balancing budgets over the short term. There was a bias in the interventions described towards targeting health behaviours, but with limited use of evidence about efficacy, and indications that measuring progress with reducing health inequalities was starting to lead to an emphasis on ‘quick wins' from pharmacological interventions.