The oftenobserved association between the sizeof the black population and the amount ofsocial control imposedon blacks has been interpreted as consistent with one of three conceptually distinctperspectives: (1) the political threat hypothesis, (2) the economic threat hypothesis, and (3) the threat ofblackcrime hypothesis. Although these three hypotheses advance differing conceptualizations ofthreat, adjudicating between them has proven difficult. The current study uses county-level data drawn from South Carolina's National Incident-BasedReporting System (NIBRS), race-specific voting data, and demographic data to investigate the validity of each of these racial threat hypotheses. Results from a pooledcross-sectional time-series analysis show that blackon-white crime has a substantivepositive effecton blackarrestlevels. In contrast, no such effect is observed for black-on-black crime. These findings taken together furnish strongsupportfor the threat of blackcrime hypothesis. The curvilinear relationship between the ratio of black-to-whitevotes castin a general election and black arrest levels hypothesized by the political threat hypothesis does not hold for the data analyzed. Additionally, we find no empirical support for the economic threat hypothesis. The implications of these findings arediscussed.Social scientists continue to debate whether the social control of crime is influenced by extralegal factors. Much of this scholarship focuses on the importance of race and social class as determinants of treatment by various social control agents. The major theoretical impetus for these inquiries is the conflict perspective and its ,.. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of

We develop a conceptual model articulating the mechanisms by which racial threat is theorized to affect social control, focusing specifically on the influence of the relative size of the black population on the likelihood that the police will arrest a black citizen suspected of a violent criminal offense. A multilevel analysis of 145, 255 violent crimes reported to police in 182 cities during 2000 shows only qualified support for racial threat theory. Controlling for the amount of race‐specific crime reported to police, our findings reveal that black citizens actually have a lower probability of arrest in cities with a relatively large black population. This finding tends to cast doubt on the validity of the racial threat hypothesis. No evidence buttresses the claim that economic competition between whites and blacks affects arrest probabilities. However, results show that in cities where racial segregation is more pronounced blacks have a reduced risk sof being arrested relative to whites. Crimes involving black offenders and white victims are also more apt to result in an arrest in cities that are racially segregated. These findings support the view that racial segregation is an informal mechanism to circumscribe the threat of potentially volatile subordinate populations.

Although blacks are arrested disproportionately for most types of violent crimes, disagreement persists as to the extent to which official arrest data are indicative of differential offending behavior or selection bias on the part of law enforcement personnel. Using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), we assess the effect of an offender's race on the probability of arrest for 335,619 incidentsofforcible rape, robbery, and assaultin 17 states during 1999. The baseline modelfor these comparisons is the equiprobability hypothesis that relative to violation frequency as reported by crime victims, the likelihood of arrestfor white and black offenders is roughly equal. Multivariate logistic regression results show that the odds of arrestfor white offenders is approximately 22% higherfor robbery, 13% higher for aggravated assault, and 9% higherfor simple assault than they are for black offenders. An offender's race plays no noteworthy role in the likelihood of arrestfor the crime offorcible rape. These findings suggest that the disproportionately high arrestratefor black citizens is most likelyattributable to differential involvement in reported crime rather than to racially biased law enforcement practices.