It has been long recognized that cash plays a critical role in fueling street crime because of its liquidity and transactional anonymity. In this paper, we investigate whether the reduction in the circulation of cash on the streets associated with electronic benefit transfer (EBT) program implementation had an effect on crime. To address this question, we exploit the variation in the timing of EBT implementation across Missouri counties and counties in the states bordering Missouri. According to our results, the EBT program had a negative and significant effect on the overall crime rate and specifically for burglary, assault, and larceny. The point estimates indicate that the overall crime rate decreased by 9.2 percent in response to the EBT program. Interestingly, the significant drop in crime in the United States over several decades coincided with a period of steady decline in the proportion of financial transactions involving cash.
A limited but accumulating body of research and theoretical commentary offers support for core claims of the “institutional-anomie theory” of crime (IAT) and points to areas needing further development. In this paper, which focuses on violent crime, we clarify the concept of social institutions, elaborate the cultural component of IAT, derive implications for individual behavior, summarize empirical applications, and propose directions for future research. Drawing on Talcott Parsons, we distinguish the “subjective” and “objective” dimensions of institutional dynamics and discuss their interrelationship. We elaborate on the theory’s cultural component with reference to Durkheim’s distinction between “moral” and “egoistic” individualism and propose that a version of the egoistic type characterizes societies in which the economy dominates the institutional structure, anomie is rampant, and levels of violent crime are high. We also offer a heuristic model of IAT that integrates macro- and individual levels of analysis. Finally, we discuss briefly issues for the further theoretical elaboration of this macro-social perspective on violent crime. Specifically, we call attention to the important tasks of explaining the emergence of economic dominance in the institutional balance of power and of formulating an institutional account for distinctive punishment practices, such as the advent of mass incarceration in the United States.
This Element reviews and augments research on changes over time in U.S. crime rates during the past several decades. Major topics include the data sources for studying crime trends; the relationship between homicide rates and rates of property crime, imprisonment, and firearm availability; trends in crime by sex, race, and age; the relationship between crime trends and economic conditions; crime trends and social institutions; abrupt changes in crime rates and exogenous shocks; forecasting crime rates; and the future of crime trends theory and research. The study of crime trends is as intellectually rewarding and practically important as any topic in criminology. But attracting scholars to this field of study of crime trends will require significant advancements in theory, methods, and policy application.
Understanding the complex relationship between immigration and crime was once a core concern of American sociology. Yet the extensive post-1965 wave of immigration to the United States has done little to rekindle scholarly interest in this topic, even as politicians and other public figures advocate public policies to restrict immigration as a means of preventing crime. Although both popular accounts and sociological theory predict that immigration should increase crime in areas where immigrants settle, this study of Miami, El Paso, and San Diego neighborhoods shows that, controlling for other influences, immigration generally does not increase levels of homicide among Latinos and African Americans. Our results not only challenge stereotypes of the "criminal immigrant" but also the core criminological notion that immigration, as a social process, disorganizes communities and increases crime.
After tracking one another closely for decades, the U.S. robbery rate increased and the burglary rate declined in the late 1980s. The authors investigate the impact of crack on this divergence using a two-stage hierarchical linear model that decomposes between-and within-city variation in crime rates for 142 cities. Given its prominence in discussions of crack and criminal violence, homicide offending is also examined. Net of other influences, cities with higher levels of crack use experienced larger increases in robbery and decreases in burglary. Cities with greater levels of crack had higher homicide rates but did not show more rapid increases in these rates than other cities. The results suggest that the emergence and proliferation of crack shifted the balance of urban offending opportunities and rewards from burglary to robbery.
Research on race effects in police traffic stops is theoretically underdeveloped. In this study, we derive propositions from Donald Black's theory of law to explain the interaction effects of officer and driver race on searches in traffic stops in St. Louis, Missouri. Our citywide results and those for stops in predominantly White communities are generally consistent with the theory: Searches are more likely in stops of Black drivers than in those of White drivers, especially by White officers, controlling for other characteristics of the officer, driver, and stop. In predominantly Black communities, however, stops of White drivers by White officers are most likely to result in a search. We interpret both sets of results as manifestations of racial profiling in segregated communities and suggest that Black's theory of law remains a promising theoretical framework for future research on the continuing significance of race‐based policing in the United States.
