Segregation and Crime: The Effect of Black Social Isolation on the Rates of Black Urban Violence

Abstract

Prior segregation-crime research has failed to recognize that segregation has many geographic forms and each may have a distinct macrosocial path to crime. We sharpen the conceptual link between segregation and crime by considering how the social isolation of urban blacks increases black violence. Using race-disaggregated Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and census data for 1990, we examine the link between black social isolation and the rates of black homicide and robbery in U.S. cities. In contrast to previous research, which employs the index of dissimilarity (D) as a default indicator of segregation (which it is not), we measure the spatial isolation (P) of blacks from whites. Black isolation emerges as a strong predictor of the rates of black violence in major U.S. cities, a finding that may account for prior evidence of a link between segregation and violence at the macro level.