Race, Class, and Crime: Reconsidering the Spatial Effects of Social Isolation on Rates of Urban Offending

Abstract

I examine two views on the social isolation–crime link. The first is rooted in the outmigration of nonpoor blacks from black central cities, creating a black class isolation. The second identifies the pathologies of racial isolation, where blacks are separated from whites. These different interpretations of social isolation are compared across 278 neighborhoods in a midsized U.S. City. Findings show that black class isolation increases violent crime whereas racial isolation does not. Also, characteristics of populations outside the focal neighborhood are more important than those inside, suggesting that extant neighborhood studies are misspecified and underestimate the structural effects on neighborhood crime.