Racial Tensions and School Crime

• Author: Yeoun Soo Kim-Godwin,Michael O. Maume,Caroline M. Clements
• DOI: 10.1177/1043986210369283
• Published date: 01 August 2010
• Date: 01 August 2010
• Subject Matter: Articles

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

26(3) 339 –358

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DOI: 10.1177/1043986210369283

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Racial Tensions and

School Crime

Michael O. Maume1, Yeoun Soo Kim-Godwin1,

and Caroline M. Clements1

Abstract

This article uses data on school crime and other characteristics from a study of U.S.

public schools to contribute to our knowledge about the extent and correlates of

school violence and property crime . Following a brief review of the literature, the

authors describe their efforts to examine the link between racial tensions and school

crime. Relying on the macro version of general strain theory (GST) developed by

Agnew and racial contact/threat perspectives on school race relations, a more specific

purpose for their ar ticle is to determine the extent to which school-based crime is

at least a partial function of extant racial tensions in schools. Analyses of violent and

property-related incidents across a weighted sample of 1,936 middle and high schools

indicate that racial tensions is a significant, positive correlate of both types of school

crime, net of other school climate, organizational, and demographic characteristics.

They discuss these findings and describe directions for future research with these

data.

Keywords

school crime, racial tensions, general strain theory, secondary schools

A commonly-cited survey of top problems in public schools in 1940 lists items such

as talking, chewing gum, and running in the halls. This list has been compared with

dramatic effect to the problems faced by schools in modern times, which include

drugs, pregnancy, and violence. Both lists were exposed as hoaxes (O’Neill, 1994);

however, the plausibility of the wide prevalence of crime-plagued schools is illustra-

tive of the misinformation surrounding school violence, and it underscores the need

for credible data (Cornell, n.d.). One of the reasons such hoaxes may take root is an

1University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington

Corresponding Author:

Michael O. Maume, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Dept. of Sociology and Criminology,

Wilmington, NC 28403-5978

Email: maume@uncw.edu

340 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 26(3)

historical lack of data on school crime. Paradoxically, myths and media attention to

particularly horrid cases of school violence (e.g., the mass murders at Columbine and

Virginia Tech), as well as concerns about weapon carrying at schools (Kingery &

Coggeshall, 2001), seem to have spurred efforts to collect better data, at least in the

United States (Office for Victims of Crime, 2002). Despite relatively low levels of

school-based violence in comparison to rates of adolescent violent victimization over-

all, there is no doubt that school disorder and violence remains a critical area of study

in criminology as well as a critical social problem. In fact, about half of all violent

crimes perpetrated against middle-school and high-school students occur while they

are attending school (Dinkes et al., 2007).

The primary purpose of our article is to use national data on school violence to

contribute to our knowledge about the extent and correlates of such incidents. Follow-

ing a brief review of literature on crime in the school context, we describe our efforts

to examine the link between racial tensions and school crime. Relying on the macro

version of general strain theory (GST) developed by Agnew (1999), as well as the

literature on racial conflict/tensions, a more specific purpose for our article is to deter-

mine the extent to which school-based crime is at least a partial function of extant

racial tensions in schools. Although tests of macro GST have employed indicators of

strain and anger and found at least partial support for the theory (Brezina et al., 2001;

Warner & Fowler, 2003), we seek here to take the notion of strain and frustration at the

macro (i.e., school) level down a path that has been unexplored up to this point. Fol-

lowing recent studies focusing on more general questions of the relationship between

race and youth violence (Felson et al., 2008; Ferguson, 2003; Haynie & Payne, 2006;

Kaufman et al., 2008; Stretesky & Hogan, 2005), we argue that racial dynamics and

differences across contexts remain a current and important factor in explanations of

youth crime in the school setting.

Crime in the School Context

Although there is a long history in criminology of collecting data within schools to

study delinquency, micro-level theories of delinquency historically have downgraded

the importance of the organizational context of individual delinquent behavior (Bursik

& Grasmick, 1993). Even those theories most relevant to schooling—most notably

Hirschi’s (1969) social bonding theory—limit conceptualization of “school” variables

to the individual’s relationship with or feelings about school and teachers, or the

amount of time devoted to school activities in relation to other pursuits. The ignorance

of school context places undue attention on the individual student and the concomitant

structural backgrounds and preexisting characteristics brought by them into the school.

Several critics have argued that by individualizing the problem of school disorder

through different means, such as the medicalization of deviance (Conrad, 1975),

biological arguments (Côté & Allahar, 1995), or the emphasis on cultural baggage

(Devine, 1996), we are overlooking the role that schools play in contributing to and

preventing violence and disorder.