Race, Racism, & Crime: An Empirical Assessment of African American Offending Open Access
Isom, Deena Ann (2015)
Published
Abstract
In the United States, African Americans are disproportionately more likely to be arrested and incarcerated. Much of this disparity may be explained by the overrepresentation of African Americans in disadvantaged neighborhoods or the systemic discrimination within the criminal justice system. Self-report and victimization data, however, still reveal significant racial differences in criminal behavior. The theory of African American offending (TAAO) posits African Americans experience racial discrimination and criminal justice injustices which lead to negative emotions and weakened social bonds and increase the likelihood of offending. TAAO brings race central to the understanding of offending by emphasizing the significance of racial socialization as a conditioning factor in African Americans' pathway to crime. Agnew's racialized general strain theory (RGST), relatedly, argues African Americans are more likely to experience strains that are conducive to crime, in addition to racial discrimination. Due to their unique history and resultant social position, African Americans are hypothesized to be more likely to encounter economic strains, familial strains, educational strains, community strains, as well as strains such as prejudice and victimization. African Americans are more likely to view these strains as unjust increasing the likelihood of negative affect, particularly anger. The present study examines the utility of TAAO and RGST to explain serious and violent offending and substance use among an economically diverse sample of youth and young adult African Americans from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods data. This work adds considerable knowledge on a unique and vital portion of the American population and their offending behaviors.
Table of Contents
Chapter One 1
An Introduction
Chapter Two 6
Race and Crime: The Statistics and Theories
Chapter Three 31
Racism and Crime: The Theory of African American Offending and Racialized General Strain Theory
Chapter Four 46
Methodology
Chapter Five 60
An Empirical Assessment of the Theory of African American Offending
Chapter Six 67
An Empirical Assessment and Extension of Racialized General Strain Theory
Chapter Seven 79
DiscussionReferences 98
Appendix A: PHDCN Data Structure 141
Appendix B: ICPSR Raw Data File Organization 155
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