NCJ Number
206113
Journal
Criminology Volume: 42 Issue: 2 Dated: May 2004 Pages: 359-389
Date Published
May 2004
Length
31 pages
Annotation
This study assessed whether support for harsh punitive policies toward crime was related to the racial typification of crime for a national random sample of households.
Abstract
Measuring the relationship between where people live and their fear of crime is one approach to specifying the race-specific crime threat implicit to the social threat hypothesis. Another is to measure directly the extent at which people associate crime with African-Americans. Regardless of the racial composition of neighborhoods, an explicit link between race and crime may be the basis for support of more punitive controls--more arrests, more funding for police, greater use of incarceration, or other punitive measures. Racial typification of crime may contribute to what some have called modern racism. The data for this study were collected through a telephone survey of a national random sample of adults in households accessed by random dialing. The data were analyzed using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The data demonstrate that one of the consequences of the typification of crime is modern racism. This racism eschews overt expressions of racial superiority and hostility but instead sponsors a broad anti-Africa-American effect that equates African-Americans with a variety of negative traits of which crime is certainly one. This study demonstrates that the equation of race and crime is a significant sponsor of the punitive attitudes that are given material substance in the extraordinary rates of incarceration now found in the United States. Tables, references