Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Crime and Criminal Justice

Vocabulary flashcards covering key criminological theories, empirical studies, institutional data sources, and racial/ethnic disparities in crime and incarceration.

Uniform Crime Report (UCR)

The FBI's official compilation of reported crime statistics, which primarily captures street crime but is limited by citizen underreporting, police discretion, and changing reporting standards.

National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

A nationally representative survey measuring criminal victimization directly from households to capture the dark figure of crime omitted from official police records.

Self-Reported Studies

Crime data sources (such as NLSY, Add Health, and PHDCN) where respondents report their own unlawful acts; highly valid for measuring minor infractions like drug use or speeding, though vulnerable to under- or over-reporting.

Dark Figure of Crime

The volume of unrecorded or unreported criminal activity that never comes to the attention of law enforcement, best identified through victimization surveys.

Intra-Racial Crime

Crime that occurs where both the perpetrator and the victim belong to the same racial group, characteristic of the majority of violent crimes in the United States.

Racial/Ethnic Stratification

The hierarchical ordering and ranking of racial and ethnic groups in a society that influences offending patterns, rates of victimization, and criminal justice system outcomes.

Concentrated Poverty

A spatial pattern in which poor minority residents are clustered in neighborhoods alongside other impoverished individuals, unlike poor whites who more frequently reside in moderate, higher-wealth neighborhoods.

New Latino Underclass

A concept identified by Massey and Pren (2012) describing how restrictive immigration policies risk producing a socially isolated Latino population trapped in cycles of poverty and restricted upward mobility.

Racial Invariance Hypothesis

The criminological premise that the relationship between structural disadvantage and crime rates is identical and constant across all racial and ethnic groups.

Social Disorganization Theory

A theoretical perspective arguing that crime stems from neighborhood ecological factors—including poverty, residential mobility, and cultural heterogeneity—which erode social networks and informal social controls.

Selection Bias

A methodological distortion occurring when research subjects fail to accurately represent the broader target population, exemplified by the dilemma of whether marriage causes happiness or happier individuals select into marriage.

Light and Ulmer (2016)

An empirical study showing that racial/ethnic homicide gaps have narrowed, that structural disadvantage drives these gaps, and that increased immigration and incarceration correspond with smaller Black-white homicide differences.

Paradox of Assimilation

The criminological observation that Latino immigrants often demonstrate superior social and behavioral outcomes—such as lower and declining crime rates—relative to expectations based on their socioeconomic status.

Dillingham Commission (1911)

A government commission that concluded there was no satisfactory empirical evidence indicating that crime was more prevalent among the foreign-born than among native-born citizens.

Wickersham Commission (1931)

A federal investigation that evaluated law enforcement and crime, concluding that immigration does not lead to increases in crime.

Irony of Tribal Sovereignty

The systemic circumstance where recognizing Native American tribes as sovereign nations directs their criminal cases to federal courts, inadvertently subjecting low-level tribal offenses to harsher federal punishments.

Sentencing Reform Movement

A bipartisan movement intended to constrain judicial discretion—pushed by the left to reduce racial sentencing disparities and by the right to eliminate leniency—that ultimately propelled mass incarceration via mandatory minimums.

Felon Disenfranchisement Laws

Statutes revoking the voting rights of convicted felons, which disproportionately dilute the political influence of Black communities due to their high incarceration rates.

Legal Legitimacy (Tom Tyler)

The concept that citizens obey the law primarily because they perceive legal authorities and institutions as just, procedural, and worthy of compliance, rather than out of deterrence.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP)

The federal law enforcement organization maintaining the largest armed officer force in the United States, numbering roughly 35,000 to 43,000 officers.

Vélez (2006)

A study explaining that Latino neighborhoods experience lower rates of violence than Black neighborhoods due to lower concentrated disadvantage, proximity to affluent areas, stronger ethnic enclaves, and better police relations.

Social Capital

The informal resources and mutual assistance individuals can access through social ties and community standing by being viewed as trustworthy.

James Forman Jr.'s Critique of the Jim Crow Analogy

An analysis arguing that equating mass incarceration to Jim Crow obscures class divides, neglects the preceding surge in violent crime, overlooks Black support for punitive crime measures, and ignores white incarceration.

Pew Report (2008)

A widely cited benchmark study documenting that the United States incarcerated 1 in every 100 adults as a consequence of late-1990s and early-2000s tough-on-crime policies.