The U.S. Racial Structure and Ethno-Racial Inequality in Urban Neighborhood Crime, 2010–2013

Abstract

Stark ethno-racial differences in reported neighborhood crime are a major facet of contemporary U.S. inequality. However, the most generalizable research on neighborhood inequality in crime across cities is only for 2000. Many of the underpinnings of crime have changed since 2000—increases in socioeconomic segregation, the Great Recession and attendant housing crisis, the continuation of the crime decline, shifting trends in incarceration and other types of social control, and small decreases in racial residential segregation. We provide a much-needed assessment of whether ethno-racial reported neighborhood crime disparities have increased, remained stable, or decreased in the contemporary period. We invoke a racial structural perspective that traces ethno-racial disparities in neighborhood crime to the divergent community conditions emblematic of the U.S. racial hierarchy. Using newly collected data for 8,557 neighborhoods in 71 large U.S. cities for 2010–2013, we demonstrate that violent and property crime is lower in White, African American, Latino, minority, and multiethnic neighborhoods than in 2000. However, smaller relative decreases in African American neighborhoods widened the relative crime gap from other ethno-racial communities. Supporting the racial structural perspective, large ethno-racial inequalities in neighborhood well-being account for most of the crime gaps, with disadvantage and residential lending being most important. This suggests that non-White neighborhoods need economic investments to reduce the harmful and inequitable consequences of neighborhood crime.