Social Structure and Crime Control Among Macrosocial Units

Liska, Allen E.; Chamlin, Mitchell B.

doi:10.1086/228084

Cited by 246 publications

(183 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Police officers would be expected to respond more vigorously and formally, even to minor incidents, in order to gain control over the area and its residents. The threat hypothesis has been supported in some studies (Jackson, 1989;Liska & Chamlin, 1984;Liska, Chamlin, & Reed, 1985;Smith, 1986;Sung, 2002;Warner, 1997), and if it holds in the present analysis, more recording is expected in poor and minority neighborhoods.…”

Section: Neighborhoods and Police Resource Mobilization -Prior Researchsupporting

confidence: 79%

“…Some argue there is a positive relationship between the distribution of police resources and social status, with economically advantaged neighborhoods receiving the most and best quality of governmental resources. This perspective suggests that fewer government services of all types are allocated to poor and minority neighborhoods; per resident, less money is spent on streets, social services, recreation, libraries, police, and fire protection (Lineberry, 1977;Liska & Chamlin, 1984). Liska and Chamlin (1984) argue government employees (including police) do not place equivalent value on residents of these disadvantaged areas, a situation the authors refer to as "benign neglect."…”

Section: Neighborhoods and Police Resource Mobilization -Prior Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This perspective suggests that fewer government services of all types are allocated to poor and minority neighborhoods; per resident, less money is spent on streets, social services, recreation, libraries, police, and fire protection (Lineberry, 1977;Liska & Chamlin, 1984). Liska and Chamlin (1984) argue government employees (including police) do not place equivalent value on residents of these disadvantaged areas, a situation the authors refer to as "benign neglect." Police officers may be less likely to use their authority to aid victims because even serious incidents may be viewed as "trivial" and victims as less deserving or credible (Uviller, 1984).…”

Section: Neighborhoods and Police Resource Mobilization -Prior Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

Varano

Schafer

Cancino

et al. 2009

Journal of Criminal Justice

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a b s t r a c tIt has long been acknowledged that police officers have substantial levels of discretion in their day-to-day activities. There is a well developed body of literature that considers how this discretion is exercised across a broad array of situations including the decision to arrest, use force, and grant citizen requests for official action. Using both social disorganization and conflict theories as conceptual models, the purpose of this study was to determine if neighborhood characteristics affect police reporting behavior across a wide cross-section of reported call types. The findings indicated that reporting behavior widely varies across crime types with a greater percentage of more serious crimes translated into official crime. Neighborhood characteristics did affect reporting practices, but surprisingly only for more serious forms of disorder where discretion was perceived to be less. The findings lent support for both social disorganization and conflict theories. Theoretical implications are discussed.© 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. IntroductionQuestions about when and how police use discretion have been a pressing concern among scholars for decades. A large body of literature seeks to explain discretionary decision-making by police, particularly regarding the use of force and decision to arrest. Less empirical consideration has focused on how police use discretion when recording citizen reported calls for service into official crime, despite the broad effect this decision has on victims and communities.

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Section: Neighborhoods and Police Resource Mobilization -Prior Researchsupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Neighborhoods and Police Resource Mobilization -Prior Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Neighborhoods and Police Resource Mobilization -Prior Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

Varano

Schafer

Cancino

et al. 2009

Journal of Criminal Justice

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Such propositions have been widely tested in relation to pretrial release (Free Jr. 2004;Nagel 1983), sentencing (Bontrager et al 2005;Feldmeyer and Ulmer 2011;Jacobs and Carmichael 2002;Ruddell and Urbina 2004;Stolzenberg et al 2004;Wang 2012;Wang and Mears 2010), the size of police forces (Chamlin 1989;Stults and Baumer 2007), arrest (Chamlin and Liska 1992;Liska and Chamlin 1984;Parker et al 2005) and police use of deadly force (Liska and Yu 1992).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceal Carry and Race: A Test of Minority Threat Theory in Law Generation

Mullins

Kavish

2017

Social Sciences

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Conceal carry weapon (CCW) laws have generated a great deal of public discussion in the past decades, but little social science attention. Scholarly work on the topic has been focused on finding potential effects of such laws on crime and victimization; little has attempted to explain the trends behind the adoption of the laws. This paper attempts to fill that gap by testing a series of hypotheses grounded in minority threat approaches. Our paper examines whether changes in the racial and ethnic composition of a county predict the voting outcome of Missouri's 1999 conceal-carry referendum. Findings fail to reject the null hypothesis and show the best predictor of the vote within a county was how that county voted in the 2000 Presidential election.

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“…Liska and Chamlin (1984) extend this theory to include the threat of black crime. The threat of black crime hypothesis asserts that social control will increasingly be directed against blacks as their population grows larger in size and as black-on-white crime increases.…”

Section: Racial Threat Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizational Approaches to Drug Law Enforcement by Local Police Departments in the United States: Specialized Drug Units and Participation in Multi-Agency Drug Task Forces

Lombardo

Olson

2009

Justice Research and Policy

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This paper examines the factors associated with the decision of local police departments in the United States to operate specialized drug units or to participate in multi-jurisdictional drug task forces. Combining data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) Survey, the 2000 Census, and the Uniform Crime Report, we use both bivariate and multivariate methods to conduct the analysis. The findings indicate that county-level agencies, those with other formalized drug control efforts, high levels of violent crime, high degrees of task specialization and formalization, and high proportions of the resident population accounted for by renters were more likely to operate drug units, participate in multi-agency drug task forces, and allocate more officers per capita to these efforts.

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Social Structure and Crime Control Among Macrosocial Units

Cited by 246 publications

References 12 publications

Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

Constructing crime: Neighborhood characteristics and police recording behavior

Conceal Carry and Race: A Test of Minority Threat Theory in Law Generation

Organizational Approaches to Drug Law Enforcement by Local Police Departments in the United States: Specialized Drug Units and Participation in Multi-Agency Drug Task Forces

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