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Abstract
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This paper examines the relationships among unemployment, crime, and family disruption in the black "underclass." The main hypothesis tested is that the effect of black adult male joblessness on black crime is mediated largely through its effects on family disruption. The study examines race-specific rates of robbery and homicide by juveniles and adults in over 150 U.S. cities in 1980. The results show that the scarcity of employed black men increases the prevalence of families headed by females in black communities. In turn, black family disruption substantially increases the rates of black murder and robbery, especially by juveniles. These effects are independent of income, region, race and age composition, density, city size, and welfare benefits and are similar to the effects of white family disruption on white violence. The paper concludes that there is nothing inherent in black culture that is conducive to crime. Rather, persistently high rates on black crime appear to stem from the structural linkages among unemployment, economic deprivation, and family disruption in urban black communities.
VioLit summary:
OBJECTIVE:
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among unemployment, crime and family disruption among urban black populations.
METHODOLOGY:
The author employed a quasi-experimental cross-sectional design with a non-probability sample of the 171 cities in the United States with a population larger than 100,000 people in 1980. O these 171, 156 cities met the selection criterion of having a black population of at least 1,000 people. In order to examine the effects of an area's rate of family disruption upon its crime rates, the author constructed racially disaggregated measures of city characteristics with data that were obtained from the United States Bureau of Census. Area family structure was measured as the percentage of black households with female heads, and was further measured as the percentage of households with children under the age of 18 years with female heads. A male marriage pool index was established to determine the number of employed black males per 100 as an indicator of economic deprivation. To account for the effects of welfare upon family disruption, mean public assistance payments per family in each city was used as a control variable. Median age of the black population was also included as a control, as were region (controlled via dummy variables) and racial composition. The natural log of the size of the population was also used, as was a measure of structural density of housing units, defined as the percentage of housing units (owned or rented) situated in complexes of five or more units. Data on crime rates were obtained from FBI unpublished arrest counts by type of crime and by demographic group for each police jurisdiction in each city for 1980 through 1982. by combining these data with census information, race-specific rates of crime were estimated. An estimate of rates of offending were constructed by multiplying each arrest rate by the offense/arrest ratio in each jurisdiction. Race- and age-specific offending rates were then calculated for homicide and for robbery for each city for the years 1980-1982, and a three-year average rate was computed. Of the 156 cities selected, robbery data were available for all, but homicide data were available only 153. Tests of multicollinearity were performed, and the level of multicollinearity was found to be fairly low. Analyses included examination of frequencies, ordinary least squares regression estimates and maximum-likelihood parameter estimates.
FINDINGS/DISCUSSION:
The author began by examining descriptive statistics for black and white populations. He found that there were ten more white employed males per white female than there were black employed males for black women. Per-capita income was 69% higher for whites, and the rate of female-headed households was 185% higher for blacks; the rate for female-headed households with children was 146% higher for blacks than for whites. Whilst large racial differences were found between white and black communities, the black communities themselves showed substantial variation in a number of characteristics, with variables such as female-headed households and mean per-capita income varying greatly between cities. In the first regression analysis, the author examined predictors of female-headed black households, and found that the strongest predictor was the male marriage pool index (-.47) ó an increase in the number of employed black men reduced the rates of female-headed households substantially. Rates of female-headed households were higher in cities with a high percentage of blacks (.24), with a higher mean welfare payment (.21), with low per-capita income (-.18) and low median age (-.18), and in a northern location (.13). The author concluded that the primary predictors of family disruption were embedded structural factors. Turning to the prediction of criminal homicide rates for juveniles, the strongest predictor was found to be family disruption (.41), followed by population size (.22) and black median age (.21). For adult rates, the strongest predictor was living in the Western region (.71), followed by mean welfare payment (-.35), black per-capita income (-.28) and living in a Northern region (.28), and population size (.20). The author suggested that family disruption had a stronger effect upon juvenile criminal homicide than upon adult homicide. Although the male marriage pool index had no direct effect upon crime rates, it did have substantial indirect effects upon both juvenile crime (-.19) and upon adult crime (-.10), through family disruption. Examining the prediction of robbery, the author found that juvenile rates were again best predicted by family structure, with the female-headed households variable having a beta with of .55. Other strong predictors included Western region (.47), structural density (.28), Northern region (.23), mean welfare payment (.18), and per-capita income (-.17). Weaker effects were found for the male joblessness/marriage pool index (.18) and for median age (.13). The indirect effect of the employment pool index was again large (-.26). For adult robbery, the strongest predictor was Western region (.58), followed by structural density (.41), and Northern region (.29). Family disruption had a weight of .28, and black per-capita income was weighted at -.19. Again, the male joblessness rate had the greatest indirect effect through family disruption (-.13), with a coefficient double that for juvenile robbery ó again indicating the importance of family disruption for juvenile criminal behavior. The racial composition of cities was found to be unrelated to crime type for both ages, with variations in black crime rates being due not to the higher concentration of blacks, as proposed by the subculture of violence theory, but to structured inequalities in income and in jobs, leading in turn to high and continuing rates of family disruption. Repeating these regressions with other variables to test for problems with multicollinearity, the author found similar results to those in his initial regressions. Testing these findings with a white population, in order to validate his finings that the causal influences of family disruption were part of the general processes of social control and were not unique to the black community, the author's results, similar to those for the black population, repudiated the subculture of violence notion that the causes of black crime could be found in unique aspects of their culture. The author concluded that the criminogenic influence of a disrupted family were generic and consistent across cultures. In order to test for a reciprocal relationship between family disruption and crime, the author estimated a simultaneous equation model, and found that the effect of family disruption on black crime was strongly positive 9.71), and was not due to the reciprocal effect of crime itself (null reciprocal effect of .01). The importance of male joblessness was again demonstrated, with a large effect upon family disruption (.47). The author concluded that rates of black violent offending, especially that of juveniles, were strongly influenced by variations in the structure of the family unit. This effect of family disruption could not be attributed to unique cultural factors in the black community ó a finding which raises questions about the subculture of violence theories.
AUTHOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS:
The author suggested that the emphasis of social policies should be turned to the structural forces of economic deprivation and employment marginality that are present in the lives of black males, and should consider the consequences of these forces for family disruption and criminal behavior. Policies directed at increasing employment and helping families would be more successful in reducing crime than the current policies of decreasing welfare and incarcerating more and more of the black population.
EVALUATION:
The author presents a thoughtful and interesting investigation of the effects of male joblessness and family disruption upon urban black violence. The inclusion of all the possible cities appropriate to this analysis provides a fairly good sample size, and the use of sophisticated methodologies and controls for potential methodological problems suggest that the results can be interpreted with faith in their reliability. Measurement of variables was well explained, and results wee clearly discussed. Whilst a more through discussion of the implications of the findings would have been helpful, the study as a whole represents an important addition to the study of violence, and its results should be heeded by policy planners and researchers alike. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado)
KW - Urban Violence
KW - Urban Youth
KW - African American Adult
KW - African American Crime
KW - African American Juvenile
KW - African American Male
KW - African American Male
KW - African American Violence
KW - Male Crime
KW - Male Violence
KW - Male Offender
KW - Juvenile Male
KW - Juvenile Offender
KW - Juvenile Violence
KW - Juvenile Crime
KW - Adult Male
KW - Adult Crime
KW - Adult Violence
KW - Adult Offender
KW - Crime Causes
KW - Violence Causes
KW - Unemployment Factors
KW - Employment Factors
KW - Socioeconomic Factors
KW - Sociocultural Factors
KW - Family Environment
KW - Family Relations
KW - Financial Factors
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