Race and Violent Crime in the Suburbs Author(s): Allen E. Liska, John R. Logan, Paul E. Bellair Reviewed work(s): Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Feb., 1998), pp. 27-38 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2657475 . Accessed: 26/02/2012 14:44 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Sociological Review. http://www.jstor.org

RACE AND VIOLENT CRIME IN THE SUBURBS* Allen E. Liska John R. Logan SUNY-Albany SUNY-Albany Paul E. Bellair The Ohio State University It is well known that crime rates, when examined by residential area, are positively correlated with racial composition. This is usually interpreted to mean that racial composition affects crime rates, although there is debate over why. We consider an alternative interpretation: that reciprocal causal effects exist between these two variables. The crime rate itself may change the racial composition of an area by making it a less desirable place in which to live and invest. This hypothesis is tested with longitudinal data for a national sample of suburbs for the period 1970 to 1990. We find significant and ap- proximately equal causal effects in both directions specifically, it is the rob- bery component of crime that affects racial composition. High robbery rates are associated with black population growth while stimulating white flight. he link between race and crime, in real- ity and in people's perceptions, hinders the racial integration of U.S. suburbs. As Downs (1973) put it two decades ago, Many whites associate high crime rates with blacks so they are doubly fearful of having low- and moderate-income black households as neighbors. It is both inaccurate and unwise to dismiss these widespread beliefs as mere preju- dice. There is overwhelming statistical evi- dence that high crime, vandalism, and delin- quency rates are indeed found in areas that are predominantly low-income or predominantly black-and especially both. (P. 72) Subsequent research demonstrates that at any given point in time the racial composition of an individual suburban community (Stahura, Huff, and Smith 1980 Stahura and Huff 1981) or of a suburban region (Logan and Messner 1987) is a strong independent pre- dictor of its level of violent crime. This finding seems to support Downs's view, which is usually interpreted in the aca- demic community to mean that an increase in a minority population results in rising crime, especially violent crime. Assuming this direction of causality, the debate focuses on competing social explanations of the causal process: social disorganization, eco- nomic strain, or a subculture of violence. We examine the effects of racial composi- tion on crime rates, but we give equal weight to the opposite causal order-the violent crime rate itself could cause a change in ra- cial composition. Such a causal sequence has rarely been investigated. Panel studies of Chicago neighborhoods (Bursik 1986) and Los Angeles census tracts (Schuerman and Kobrin 1986) report that delinquency rates affect neighborhood social characteristics analyzed as general latent factors. While these general factors include racial composi- tion, the authors include so many other so- cial variables that it is difficult to know ex- actly what factors are affected by crime rates. Recently, Liska and Bellair (1995) studied a sample of U.S. cities for the 1950-1990 pe- riod. They showed that the high correlation (.67) between the percentage of nonwhites in the population and robbery rates in 1990 re- sults from the accumulated effects over sev- eral decades of racial composition on change in the robbery rate (average / = .24) and of the robbery rate on change in racial compo- sition (average /3 = .21). The study by Liska and Bellair (1995) has several features that we replicate. First, it * Direct all correspondence to Allen E. Liska, Department of Sociology, SUNY-Albany, Al- bany, NY 12222 (ael62@cnsibm.albany.edu). We thank Brian Stults for assisting in the data collec- tion, the anonymous ASR reviewers, and the ASR Editor for their helpful comments. American Sociological Review, 1998, Vol. 63 (February:27-38) 27