Ben Feldmeyer

The Environmental Impact of Immigration: An Analysis of Immigration Effects on Air Pollution Levels

Carmel Price et al. — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:53:03 PDT

Perception and Payment of Economic Sanctions: A Survey of Offenders

R Barry Ruback et al. — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:43:18 PDT

Are Girls More Violent Today than a Generation Ago? Probably Not

Darrell Steffensmeier et al. — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:39:43 PDT

The authors examine recent trends in girls’ violence as reported in Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) arrest data, National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) victimization data, and Monitoring the Future (MTF) self-report data. Augmented Dickey-Fuller time series tests and intuitive plot displays show much overlap yet differences in each source’s portrayal of trends in girls’ violence and the juvenile gender gap. All three sources show little or no change in the gender gap for homicide, rape/sexual assault, and robbery. However, UCR police counts show a sharp rise in female-to-male arrests for criminal assault during the past decade or so but that rise is not borne out in NCVS counts based on victims’ reports and in MTF counts based on self-reported violent offending. Net-widening policy shifts (e.g., policing physical attacks/threats of marginal seriousness that girls in relative terms are more likely to commit) and more gender-neutral enforcement have apparently escalated the arrest proneness of adolescent females for “criminal assault.” Rather than girls having become more violent, official data increasingly mask differences in violent offending by male and female youth.

Elder Crime: Patterns and Trends, 1980-2004

Ben Feldmeyer — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:35:32 PDT

Using the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) arrest statistics for the 1980 to 2004 period, we use age-standardization and Dickey-Fuller time-series techniques to examine recent trends in elderly crime (age 55+), both alone and compared to younger age groups. We find that (1) elderly arrest rates have either declined or remained essentially stable across the majority of UCR offense categories; (2) proportionate criminal involvement of the elderly is about the same now as 25 years ago, but where change has occurred, the trend is toward a smaller elderly share of criminal offending; (3) there has been very little change in the profile of the elderly offender, with elder arrests continuing to be overwhelmingly for minor offenses and alcohol-related violations. Shifts in elderly crime have generally been paralleled by similar trends among the nonelderly, indicating that recent social, economic, and legal changes have had similar impacts on arrest patterns across age groups.

Gender and Violence: Trends in Adult Male and Female Violence, 1980-2004

Jennifer Schwartz et al. — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:32:31 PDT

Constructionist theories suggest the national rise in female violence arrests may be policy generated because arrest statistics are produced by violent behavior and changing official responses (e.g., net-widening enforcement policies). Normative theories attribute the rise to female behavior changes (e.g., in response to increased freedoms or hardships). We examine whether any narrowing of the arrest gender gap is borne out across offense types of varying measurement reliability, in victimization data, and across two post-arrest criminal justice stages. Advanced time-series analyses over 1980 through 2003 support the constructionist position. First, all sources show little or no increase in women's rates for the more reliably measured offenses of homicide and robbery, and for rape. Second, the assault gender gap narrows for arrests, but holds stable in victimization data. And, third, the assault gender gap narrows moderately for convictions, but is stable for imprisonment, indicating spill-over effects of more expansive arrest policies. Several factors have produced greater female representation in "criminal assault" arrests including (1) proactive policing targeting and formally responding to minor violence and in private contexts, (2) interventionist developmental epistemologies that blur distinctions among violence types and circumstances, (3) the rise of social movements recognizing "hidden" victims, (4) law and order political messages stressing greater accountability, and (5) the somewhat greater decline in male compared to female violence in the late 1990s. The problem of women's violence is largely a social construction. Rather than women becoming more violent, changes in the management of violence increasingly mask differences in the violence levels of women and men.

Does Immigration Increase Violence? The Offsetting Effects of Immigration on Hispanic Violence

Ben Feldmeyer — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:25:39 PDT

Despite longstanding interest in the effects of immigration on American society, there are few studies that examine the relationship between immigration and crime. Drawing from social disorganization theory and community resource/social capital perspectives, this study examines the effects of Latino immigration on Latino violence. Data on violence (i.e., homicide, robbery, and Violent Index) and the structural conditions of Latino populations are drawn from the California Arrest Data (CAL), New York State Arrest Data (NYSAD), and U.S. Census data for approximately 400 census places during the 1999–2001 period. Findings suggest that immigrant concentration has no direct effect on Latino homicide or Violent Index rates but may reduce Latino robbery. Immigration also appears to have multiple, offsetting indirect effects on Latino violence that work through social disorganization and community resource measures. These results suggest that (1) immigrant concentration does not contribute to Latino violence and may even reduce some forms of violence, (2) immigration simultaneously stabilizes and destabilizes structural conditions in Latino populations, and (3) it is useful to examine both the direct and indirect effects of immigration on crime.

Immigration and Homicide: A Comparison Across Race/Ethnicity

Ben Feldmeyer et al. — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:23:15 PDT

Sociological studies of crime have rarely examined the effects of immigration on aggregate patterns of violent offending, and particularly few studies have examined this relationship across multiple racial/ethnic populations. The current study extends research on immigration and crime by examining this relationship across total and race/ ethnicity-disaggregated populations (i.e., White, Black, and Latino) and for homicide offending (rather than homicide victimization) using 1999-2001 arrest data drawn from 328 census places in California. Findings reveal that immigrant concentration has trivial (nonsignificant) effects on overall homicides and Latino homicides, but slightly reduces White and Black homicide offending, net of controls. Implications of these findings are as follows: (a) Immigration does not have violence-generating effects but instead appears to have violence-neutral or perhaps some violence-reducing effects on homicide offending, and (b) This small or null effect is fairly consistent across racial/ ethnic populations.

Scope and Conceptual Issues in Testing the Race-Crime Invariance Thesis: Black, White, and Hispanic Comparisons

Darrell Steffensmeier et al. — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:14:53 PDT

Our goal in this article is to contribute conceptually and empirically to assessments of the racial invariance hypothesis, which posits that structural disadvantage predicts violent crime in the same way for all racial and ethnic groups. Conceptually, we elucidate the scope of the racial invariance hypothesis and clarify the criteria used for evaluating it. Empirically, we use 1999–2001 averaged arrest data from California and New York to extend analyses of the invariance hypothesis within the context of the scope and definitional issues raised in our conceptual framing—most notably by including Hispanic comparisons with Blacks and Whites, by examining the invariance assumption for homicide as well as the violent crime index, by using discrete as well as composite disadvantage measures, and by using census place localities as the study unit. The mixed findings we report from our comparisons (across Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics; offense types; and type of disadvantage) suggest caution and uncertainty about the notion that structural sources of violence affect racial/ethnic groups in uniform ways. We conclude that the hypothesis should be regarded as provisional, and its scope remains to be established as to whether it applies only under narrow conditions or is a principle of general applicability.

Segregation and Violence: Comparing the Effects of Residential Segregation on Latino and Black Violence

Ben Feldmeyer — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:44:19 PDT

Racial/ethnic residential segregation has been shown to contribute to violence and have harmful consequences for minority groups. However, research examining the segregation–crime relationship has focused almost exclusively on blacks and whites while largely ignoring Latinos and other race/ethnic groups and has rarely considered potential mediators (e.g., concentrated disadvantage) in segregation–violence relationships. This study uses year 2000 arrest data for California and New York census places to extend segregation–crime research by comparing the effects of racial/ethnic residential segregation from whites on black and Latino homicide. Results indicate that (1) racial/ethnic segregation contributes to both Latino and black homicide, and (2) the effects for both groups are mediated by concentrated disadvantage. Implications for segregation–violence relationships, the racial-invariance position, and the Latino paradox are discussed.

Reassessing Trends in Black Violent Crime, 1980-2008: Sorting out the ‘Hispanic Effect’ in UCR Arrests, NCVS Offenders Estimates, and U.S. Prisoner Counts

Darrell Steffensmeier et al. — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:38:44 PDT

Recent studies suggest a decline in the relative Black effect on violent crime in recent decades and interpret this decline as resulting from greater upward mobility among African Americans during the past several decades. However, other assessments of racial stratification in American society suggest at least as much durability as change in Black social mobility since the 1980s. Our goal is to assess how patterns of racial disparity in violent crime and incarceration have changed from 1980 to 2008. We argue that prior studies showing a shrinking Black share of violent crime might be in error because of reliance on White and Black national crime statistics that are confounded with Hispanic offenders, whose numbers have been increasing rapidly and whose violence rates are higher than that of Whites but lower than that of Blacks. Using 1980–2008 California and New York arrest data to adjust for this “Hispanic effect” in national Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, we assess whether the observed national decline in racial disparities in violent crime is an artifact of the growth in Hispanic populations and offenders. Results suggest that little overall change has occurred in the Black share of violent offending in both UCR and NCVS estimates during the last 30 years. In addition, racial imbalances in arrest versus incarceration levels across the index violent crimes are both small and comparably sized across the study period. We conclude by discussing the consistency of these findings with trends in economic and social integration of Blacks in American society during the past 50 years.

Racial/Ethnic Threat and Federal Sentencing

Ben Feldmeyer et al. — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:32:48 PDT

This study examines whether federal sentencing decisions are influenced by the racial/ethnic composition of federal court districts. Multilevel models of individual cases within federal judicial districts show that Black defendants receive moderately longer sentences than Whites, and that Hispanics and Whites receive similar sentences. These race/ethnicity effects on sentence length are found to vary across federal districts but not as predicted by racial threat theory. In contrast to racial threat predictions, Black sentence lengths are not significantly conditioned by the district Black population. Contrary to racial threat predictions, Hispanic defendants receive the harshest sentences when they account for the smallest share of the population (1 to 3 percent) and the most lenient sentences when they make up more sizable shares of district populations (more than 27 percent). Our results indicate that racial threat theory provides an inadequate explanation of how social contexts influence the federal sentencing of Blacks and Hispanics.