Social Anatomy of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Violence

2005/01/26 by Robert J. Sampson, Jeffrey D. Morenoff, Stephen W. Raudenbush · 6 citations
Health Professions · Medicine · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Context (archaeology) #Crime Patterns and Interventions #Demography #Domestic violence #Environmental health #Ethnic group #Geography #Gerontology #Homelessness and Social Issues #Immigration #Injury prevention #Logistic regression #Medicine #Odds #Poison control #Psychiatry #Psychological intervention #Psychology #Social environment #Sociology #Suicide prevention #Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies #White (mutation)

paper · doi:10.2105/ajph.2004.037705

openalex publication_date 2005/01/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02

Abstract

We analyzed key individual, family, and neighborhood factors to assess competing hypotheses regarding racial/ethnic gaps in perpetrating violence. From 1995 to 2002, we collected 3 waves of data on 2974 participants aged 8 [corrected] to 25 years living in 180 Chicago neighborhoods, augmented by a separate community survey of 8782 Chicago residents. The odds of perpetrating violence were 85% higher for Blacks compared with Whites, whereas Latino-perpetrated violence was 10% lower. Yet the majority of the Black-White gap (over 60%) and the entire Latino-White gap were explained primarily by the marital status of parents, immigrant generation, and dimensions of neighborhood social context. The results imply that generic interventions to improve neighborhood conditions and support families may reduce racial gaps in violence.

Citations

• Legal Cynicism and (Subcultural?) Tolerance of Deviance: The Neighborhood Context of Racial Differences
• Assessing “Neighborhood Effects”: Social Processes and New Directions in Research
• When Work Disappears
• Models for Longitudinal Data: A Generalized Estimating Equation Approach
• Marriage and health: His and hers.
• The Structural Context of Homicide: Accounting for Racial Differences in Process

Cited by

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• Low-Skill Employment Opportunity and African American-White Difference in Recidivism
• Racism in the United States [wikipedia]