Emerging research associated with the “immigration revitalization” perspective suggests that immigration has been labeled inaccurately as a cause of crime in contemporary society. In fact, crime seems to be unexpectedly low in many communities that exhibit high levels of the following classic indicators of social disorganization: residential instability, ethnic heterogeneity, and immigration. But virtually all research conducted to date has been cross‐sectional in nature and therefore unable to demonstrate how the relationship between immigration and crime might covary over time. This limitation is significant, especially because current versions of social disorganization theory posit a dynamic relationship between structural factors and crime that unfolds over time. The current study addresses this issue by exploring the effects of immigration on neighborhood‐level homicide trends in the city of San Diego, California, using a combination of racially/ethnically disaggregated homicide victim data and community structural indicators collected for three decennial census periods. Consistent with the revitalization thesis, results show that the increased size of the foreign‐born population reduces lethal violence over time. Specifically, we find that neighborhoods with a larger share of immigrants have fewer total, non‐Latino White, and Latino homicide victims. More broadly, our findings suggest that social disorganization in heavily immigrant cities might be largely a function of economic deprivation rather than forms of “neighborhood” or “system” stability.
A good deal of research in recent years has revisited the relationship between immigration and violent crime. Various scholars have suggested that, contrary to the claims of the classic Chicago School, large immigrant populations might be associated with lower rather than higher rates of criminal violence. A limitation of the research in this area is that it has been based largely on cross‐sectional analyses for a restricted range of geographic areas. Using time‐series techniques and annual data for metropolitan areas over the 1994–2004 period, we assess the impact of changes in immigration on changes in violent crime rates. The findings of multivariate analyses indicate that violent crime rates tended to decrease as metropolitan areas experienced gains in their concentration of immigrants. This inverse relationship is especially robust for the offense of robbery. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that the broad reductions in violent crime during recent years are partially attributable to increases in immigration.
Objective. Using Poisson-based negative binomial regression, we estimate the effect of neighborhood factors on homicides in two cities (San Antonio, Texas and San Diego, California) that have large Mexican-origin populations. Methods. Three independent data sources (official homicide police reports, medical examiner records, and the U.S. Census) are used to construct the dependent homicide, and independent neighborhood, variables. Census tracts represent the unit of analysis, which serve as a proxy for neighborhoods. Given the spatial nature of the data, spatial estimation procedures were also modeled. Results. Spatial proximity to violence, neighborhood disadvantage, and affluence (in San Antonio) consistently buffered homicide across neighborhoods, even in heavily populated Latino neighborhoods. Conclusions. Spatial embeddedness and neighborhood characteristics are important for improving our understanding about ethnic neighborhood variations in levels of violence. Comparative approaches across places, namely, Latinodominated cities, can yield considerable insight into how the local context intersects race/ethnicity and violent crime.A considerable amount of recent research has focused on race-specific violent crime rates at different levels of aggregation (Peterson and Krivo, 2005). These studies have shown support for the importance of estimating the effects of social and economic factors on homicide (see LaFree, O'Brien, and Baumer, 2006;Wadsworth and Kubrin, 2004). Not surprisingly, these studies consistently find that measures of economic disadvantage are a strong predictor of violent crime across white and black locales. Researchers now n Direct correspondence to Ramiro Martinez, Jr.,
It has been argued that the effects of the desegregation of public schools from the late 1960s onward were limited and short-lived, in part because of white flight from desegregating districts and in part because legal decisions in the 1990s released many districts from court orders. Data presented here for 1970-2000 show that small increases in segregation between districts were outweighed by larger declines within districts. Progress was interrupted but not reversed after 1990. Desegregation was not limited to districts and metropolitan regions where enforcement actions required it, and factors such as private schooling, district size, and inclusion of both city and suburban areas within district boundaries had stronger effects than individual court mandates.Few court decisions have affected American society as deeply as the mandate to desegregate public schools issued in the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education. A common view in the 1950s was that "you can't force integration." The experience of the last 50 years provides a test of that view. How has school segregation changed during this period? Where has there been progress, and how has change been shaped by policy choices about how public education is organized in different parts of the country? This study provides an updated evaluation of how court orders and federal intervention affected segregation within school districts in the post-Brown period, arguing that a "regime of desegregation" was established in the period from 1970 to 2000, under which actual desegregation progress did not depend directly on mandates.Although most scholars have focused on the policies of individual school districts and on court decisions that have been implemented at the district level (e.g., Orfield and Monfort 1992), this study treats school segregation as a metropolis-wide phenomenon. A large share of overall segregation, possibly more than half, is attributable to racial disparities between districts (Rivkin 1994;Clotfelter 1999;Reardon, Yun, and Eitle 2000). Accounting for segregation between districts is critical for assessments of the effectiveness of desegregation policies, because desegregation cannot increase interracial contact if it motivates white families to abandon racially mixed school districts. Many analysts from the 1960s to the
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