RACIAL-INEQUALITY AND RACIALLY DISAGGREGATED HOMICIDE RATES - AN ASSESSMENT OF ALTERNATIVE THEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS

This research considers the relationship between levels of racial inequality and homicide rates for a sample of 154 U.S. cities. We identify four causal processes that have been cited in the theoretical literature to explain the link between racial inequality and criminal violence. These different causal explanations imply distinctive relationships between racial inequality and different types of homicide rates disaggregated by the racial characteristics of victims and offenders. Accordingly, we examine the effects of racial inequality on racially disaggregated homicide rates, as well as on total rates. We also introduce factor scales to alleviate the common problem of multicollinearity. Our results reveal significant positive coefficients for racial inequality in equations predicting total homicide rates and race-specific offending rates. These results offer greatest support for theoretical arguments emphasizing a generalized effect of racial inequality on the offending behavior of residents of metropolitan communities.