Doctoral Dissertation Research: Race and Crime: Illuminating the Processes that Contribute to Crime Among and Between Whites and African-Americans

North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC

Investigators

Abstract

Previous research on race and crime has typically been limited to the demographic question of whether African-Americans are more likely to be involved in crime than Whites. However, from a theoretical standpoint, a more significant question is why this racial gap exists and whether criminological explanations of rule-breaking account equally to both African-Americans and Whites. The proposed study of race and crime will examine two fundamental theoretical questions. First, if a racial gap in self-reported rates of rule-breaking exists between African-Americans and Whites, and if so, to what extent can prominent individual-level criminological theories explain this gap? Second, do prominent individual-level criminological theories provide equally satisfactory accountings of rule-breaking among African-Americans and Whites? This research will assess the extent to which self-control, general strain, social bond, and social learning theories answer these two questions and thereby this study will offer the first comparative evaluation of these four standard theoretical explanations of the race-crime association. Data for this study will be collected from face-to-face interviews of a sample of Whites and African-Americans who live in three census tracts in Wake County, North Carolina. The research will contribute to social science understandings of the extent and character of the link, if any, between race and crime by collecting a unique dataset and by illuminating the processes that may contribute to crime among and between African-Americans and Whites.