RT Article
T1 Racial context and crime reporting: a test of Black's stratification hypothesis
JF Journal of quantitative criminology
VO 28
IS 2
SP 265
OP 293
A1 Xie, Min
A2 Lauritsen, Janet Lynn
LA English
YR 2012
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/143728910X
AB Contextual factors that contribute to race differences in reporting crime to the police are an important element in Donald Black’s theory of the behavior of the law, yet few studies have investigated whether these differences vary depending on social context. The present study investigates whether the relationships between victim and offender race and the reporting of crime are moderated by the level of racial stratification in a given place as Black’s stratification hypothesis would predict. Using victim survey data from 40 metropolitan areas, as well as data from other sources, we find results that are consistent with Black’s stratification hypothesis, namely, that victim and offender race are more strongly associated with the reporting of crime in those metropolitan areas where the gap in economic status between blacks and whites is larger and the groups are more residentially segregated. The theory, however, is unable to account for the high rates of reporting of black-on-black assaults found across the 40 metropolitan areas. The question of how the needs of black victims may outweigh their reluctance to call the police is an important issue for future research.
K1 Racial inequality
K1 Segregation
K1 Race of offender
K1 Race of victim
K1 Racial context
K1 Reporting crime to police
K1 Anzeigeverhalten
K1 Opfer
K1 Täter
K1 Rasse
K1 Ungleichheit
DO 10.1007/s10940-011-9140-z