The Dynamic Racial Structure and Disparities in Neighborhood Crime Change

Abstract

Abstract Cross-sectional scholarship demonstrates the importance of the U.S. racial structure in precipitating dramatic racial divisions in serious crime across neighborhoods. Yet, we know much less about the degree and sources of racial disparities in how neighborhood crime changes over time, despite considerable evolution in the components of the racial order. We articulate a dynamic racial structural perspective that centers the unfolding nature of residential segregation in producing and altering racially structured socioeconomic realities. We contend that these racialized structural inequalities, in turn, lead neighborhoods on unequal paths of crime change. We assess this perspective with new panel data (circa 2000 and 2010) from the National Neighborhood Crime Study for 7,875 census tracts across 75 cities. Despite considerable socioeconomic upheaval and demographic change during the first decade of the 2000s, we find substantial disparities in neighborhood violence and burglary change that indicate the reproduction of the ethno-racial divide. Furthermore, our dynamic racial structural model explains much of these inequalities in crime change. A dynamic racial structure perspective lays a foundation for understanding the consequences of the evolving U.S. racial structure for unequal exposure to crime across neighborhoods over time.