Getting away with murder: segregation and violent crime in urban America.

• Author: Massey, Douglas S.
• Position: Symposium - Shaping American Communities: Segregation, Housing & the Urban Poor

INTRODUCTION

Although rates of violent crime and crime victimization are going down for most groups in the United States,(1) they are rising for African-Americans.(2) A variety of theories have been put forth to explain this trend, but none have come to terms with black segregation. In this Article, I develop a theory that links high rates of black crime to two features of U.S. urban society: high rates of black poverty and high levels of black segregation. The coincidence of these two conditions yields an ecological niche within which rates of crime, levels of violence, and risks of victimization are high. In adapting to these conditions, people rationally adopt individual and collective strategies that offer some protection, but also fuel the violence and give it a self-perpetuating character. Unless desegregation occurs, this cycle of violence is likely to continue; however, the perpetuation of violence paradoxically makes desegregation less likely by increasing the benefits to whites of black residential isolation.

Part I of this Article provides a brief overview of the nature and prevalence of crime in the United States and its relationship to segregation. Part II shows that two conditions known to exist within urban America--high levels of black segregation and high rates of black poverty--interact to create a unique ecological niche for black Americans, within which violent behavior becomes a logical, rational adaptation. Part III reviews recent ethnographic research on racially isolated, crime-ridden areas to show how residents adapt to this structurally produced environment. Part IV attempts to explain why it has been so difficult to implement policies to promote desegregation, pointing out the economic and political benefits that whites derive from residential segregation. Part V concludes with suggestions of alternative scenarios for the future of urban America.

1. CRIME AND SEGREGATION IN THE UNITED STATES

   Americans believe they are living through an unprecedented boom in violent crime.(3) They are wrong. Serious crimes reported to the police actually dropped by 3% during each of the past two years,(4) and from 1980 to 1992 the murder rate fell by 9%.(5) These declines cannot be attributed to the underreporting of crimes to the police, because a similar shift is evident in a nationwide victimization survey carried out by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the National Institute of Justice.(6) According to this survey, criminal victimization rates are at their lowest levels in two decades: the reported incidence of aggravated assault and robbery dropped by 11% between 1973 and 1992,(7) while the victimization rate for rape fell by 28%(8) and that for burglary fell by 47%.(9) Over roughly the same period, the percentage of households experiencing crime fell substantially, from 32% to 23%.(10)

   One would never guess that crime rates were on the wane by watching television, however.(11) News coverage of violent crime by the three major networks doubled from 1992 to 1993, while coverage of murders tripled.(12) In addition, a spate of new "reality-based" cop shows, rescue programs, and tabloid offerings has given crime extensive airplay after the nightly news.(13) Thus, despite constant or declining crime rates in the United States, Americans are exposed, albeit vicariously, to more crime and violence than ever before, and consequently they feel more vulnerable and threatened. These feelings are exacerbated by two very real shifts in the nature of crime in the United States. Although rates of crime are going down, those crimes that are committed are more likely to involve guns,(14) and they are more likely to be committed by children.(15) Crime now seems more "senseless" because deadly acts are carried out by people too young to realize the implications of their decisions. Altercations that twenty years ago would have ended in a fistfight and a bloody nose now terminate with a corpse riddled by twenty-two caliber bullets fired from an automatic machine pistol.

   In addition to the rise in coverage of violent crime, the increasing use of lethal weapons, and the growing involvement of children in criminal activity, there is one more fact about contemporary crime that increases its visibility and resonates strongly in the American psyche: race. Although rates of crime may be going down for the United States generally, they are spiraling upward for one specific group of Americans: those of African origin.(16)

   According to a 1992 National Institute of Justice survey, blacks are now more likely to become victims of violence than at any point during the last two decades.(17) Black teenagers are eleven times more likely to be shot to death and nine times more likely to be murdered than their white counterparts.(18) Among black males, in particular, homicide rates have skyrocketed. Whereas young black American males were killed at the rate of about forty-five per 100,000 in 1960, by 1990 the rate was 140 per 100,000, compared to a figure of approximately twenty per 100,000 for young white males (still the highest rate in the industrialized world).(19) This alarming trend has prompted some observers to dub young black men "an endangered species."(20)

   Thus, when television viewers (who are mostly white) see rising criminal violence on television, the people they see committing increasingly lethal crimes are predominantly young, male, and black. This carries profound and disturbing consequences for American race relations. Although virtually all the victims of black criminals are also balck,(21) television viewers still learn to fear young black men. As a result, calls for harsher sentences, more police, and tougher treatment inevitably carry strong racial overtones, because such measures will be directed predominantly at black males.

   A variety of theories have been put forth to explain the new wave of violent crime in black America. Some observers have attributed black violence to the unique set of stresses experienced by urban black communities.(22) Others have linked it to persistent racial inequality, which has produced frustration expressed as violence.(23) Others argue that black crime is a natural consequence of prolonged poverty, joblessness, and income deprivation.(24) Still others hold that it stems from a distinctive subculture that accepts and condones high levels of violence.(25) Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray have gone so far as to imply that black criminality stems from the lower intelligence of African-Americans.(26)

   Missing from all of these explanations, however, is any serious attempt to come to terms with the most salient and far-reaching fact about black America: its high degree of residential segregation. Simply put, African-Americans are unique: they are and have always been more segregated than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States.(27) Blacks are segregated so highly, and on so many geographic dimensions simultaneously, that Nancy Denton and I coined the term "hypersegregation" to describe their situation.(28) According to the 1990 Census, blacks in twenty metropolitan areas, containing nearly forty percent of the African-American population, live under conditions of hypersegregation.(29)

   This unusual degree of segregation is largely involuntary and stems from the operation of three interrelated and mutually reinforcing forces in American society: high levels of institutionalized discrimination in the real estate and banking industries;(30) high levels of prejudice among whites against blacks as potential neighbors;(31) and discriminatory public policies implemented by whites at all levels of government.(32) Racial segregation is not simply a historical legacy of past prejudice and discrimination. On the contrary, it is actively perpetuated by institutional actions, private behaviors, and public policies that continue to the present day.(33)

   A growing body of research has examined the deleterious consequences of segregation for the black community, linking it to high rates of joblessness, unwed parenthood, welfare dependency, infant mortality, and poverty.(34) With two exceptions, however, neither theorists nor researchers have sought to link racial segregation to the cycle of violent crime now overtaking inner cities,(35) but when the link has been examined, it has proven to be quite strong.

   John Logan and Steven Messner studied the connection between segregation and crime using a sample of suburbs surrounding fiftyfour metropolitan areas.(36) They measured the degree of segregation between blacks and whites across municipalities within suburban rings and related it to the rate of suburban crime, while statistically controlling for other factors such as poverty, population mobility, the minority percentage, age composition, and population size.(37) They found that racial segregation was very strongly associated with rates of violent crime in both 1970 and 1980.(38) According to their results, the more racially segregated a suburban ring was, the higher its rate of violent crime.(39)

   Although Logan and Messner found a clear, positive relationship between segregation and criminal violence, the level of black-white segregation was not the strongest predictor in their statistical model;(40) other factors, such as poverty and income inequality appeared to carry more explanatory weight.(41) The investigators, however, did not examine the effect of racial segregation on black crime rates. They only examined the relationship between racial segregation and overall rates of crime in suburban rings. Because blacks constitute only a small fraction of most suburban populations, the crimes they commit would be unlikely to have a large effect on overall rates, even if segregation were strongly related to the incidence of black crime.

   In order to circumvent this problem, Ruth Peterson and Lauren Krivo studied the relationship between black segregation and black homicide...