Charis Kubrin | University of California, Irvine (original) (raw)

Papers by Charis Kubrin

British Journal of Criminology, 2024

Research finds that immigration and crime are not related across neighbourhoods, contrary to soci... more Research finds that immigration and crime are not related across neighbourhoods, contrary to social disorganization theory and consistent with the immigration revitalization thesis. This research, however, is largely silent as to any possible nonlinear effects. Yet social theory offers sound reasons for why the immigration-crime association may be nonlinear; explanations, including immigrant/ethnic enclave theory and immigrant victimization theory, underscore potential concentration effects-albeit in different ways. Using a novel dataset with information on crime in over 15,000 neighbourhoods across a diverse range of US cities, we examine whether or not the immigration-crime association is nonlinear. We find that for both violent and property crime, a nonlinear relationship best captures the relationship. In additional analyses, we determine the theoretical perspective with which the findings are most consistent.

Chapman Law Review 27(2):369-404, 2024

In rap on trial cases, prosecutors frequently introduce lyrics and videos as evidence of gang ass... more In rap on trial cases, prosecutors frequently introduce lyrics and videos as evidence of gang association, membership, or participation to help secure convictions and gang enhancements —a practice we call gang affiliation through rap misrepresentation. For the accused, the consequences of this practice can be severe: Gang enhancements can substantially increase the length of sentences, including the imposition of indeterminate life sentences or, in first degree murder cases, life without the possibility of parole and even the death penalty. In this Article, we call for greater nuance and careful treatment of rap-related evidence in the courtroom, which includes recognizing rap’s history, conventions, and practices generally, and acknowledging rap’s complicated and complex intersection with gangs specifically. Greater nuance and more careful treatment will enable courtroom members, including judges and jurors, to make better informed evaluations regarding whether rap evidence, despite being prejudicial, is sufficiently probative and if so, what relevance it may have to the case. We preface this argument with a review of punitive policies and practices associated with gangs in the criminal justice system, and with a discussion of how prosecutors use rap evidence in actual gang-related rap on trial cases. We conclude with recommendations

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2012

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2018

The rapid expansion and growing pervasiveness of gated communities across the United States in re... more The rapid expansion and growing pervasiveness of gated communities across the United States in recent decades has made it essential for researchers to consider the implications of this emerging trend for various facets of social life. This chapter analyzes the relationship between gated communities and crime across neighborhoods in Orange County, California, a county with a large number of gated communities and considerable diversity in terms of population demographics and crime rates. It begins by defining gated communities and situating the gated communities–crime relationship within existing scholarship and criminological theories. Next, it describes the data and methodological approach, and presents findings from the analysis. It concludes by discussing the findings within the context of the study’s limitations and identifying some promising new directions for research on gated communities and crime.

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 2023

California has fundamentally reformed its criminal justice system. Since 2011, the state passed s... more California has fundamentally reformed its criminal justice system. Since 2011, the state passed several reforms which reduced its massive prison population. Importantly, this decarceration has not harmed public safety as research finds these measures had no impact on violent crime and only marginal impacts on property crime statewide. The COVID-19 pandemic furthered the state's trend in decarceration, as California reduced prison and jail populations to slow the spread of the virus. In fact, in terms of monthto-month proportionate changes in the state correctional population, California's efforts to reduce overcrowding as a means to limit the spread of COVID-19 reduced the correctional population more severely and abruptly than any of the state's decarceration reforms. Although research suggests the criminal justice reforms did not threaten public safety, there is reason to suspect COVID-mitigation releases did. How are COVID-19 jail downsizing measures and crime trends related in California, if at all? We address this question in the current study. We employ a synthetic control group design to estimate the impact of jail decarceration intended to mitigate COVID-19 spread on crime in California's 58 counties. Adapting the traditional method to account for the "fuzzy-ness" of the intervention, we utilize natural variation among counties to isolate decarceration's impact on crime from various other shocks affecting California as a whole. Findings do not suggest a consistent relationship between COVID-19 jail decarceration and violent or property crime at the county level.

Societies

Societies, 2023

Compared to immigrant criminality, relatively less attention is paid to immigrant victimization, ... more Compared to immigrant criminality, relatively less attention is paid to immigrant victimization, even as extensive scholarship on criminal victimization exists more generally. This is curious in light of research showing that certain immigrant groups are at increased risk of victimization with respect to certain crimes. In this essay, we set out to answer the following questions: How do leading theories of victimization explain the risk of immigrant victimization? Are there aspects of immigrant victimization that would benefit from further theorization and empirical inquiry? How do challenges associated with data collection of immigrant populations impact the advancement of theorizing and research on immigrant victimization? What insights about immigrant victimization may be gained by better integrating theory, data, and method in this research area? To answer these questions, we first provide an overview of classic frameworks used to explain criminal victimization in general, mapping their development to broader discussions in victimology. We then review how victimization theories are used to explain immigrant victimization, discuss the possibility of using culturally integrated theories of offending in immigrant victimization research, and examine data impediments associated with studying immigrant crime victims. With an aim toward integrating theory, data, and method in this research area, we next propose that scholars center language in research on immigrant victimization, offering examples of where such an approach could yield important theoretical and empirical advancements. We conclude by identifying policies and practices that are consistent with this approach.

Sociological Perspectives, 2005

Rap is one of the most salient music genres of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centurie... more Rap is one of the most salient music genres of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Gangsta rap, in particular, with its focus on urban street life, has become a dominant means of expression within contemporary African American adolescent culture. As such, it speaks directly to issues of identity, culture, violence, and nihilism—themes that permeate recent research on inner-city black communities. Mostly ethnographic in nature, this work describes how structural disadvantage, social isolation, and despair create a black youth culture, or street code, that influences adolescent behavior. The current work builds on the community literature by exploring how the street code is present not only on “the street” but also in rap music. It addresses two important questions: (1) To what extent does rap music contain elements of the street code—and particularly nihilism—identified by Anderson (1999) and others? (2) How do rappers experience and interpret their lives, and how do...

American Journal of Criminal Justice

American Journal of Criminal Justice, 2022

How can we improve the effectiveness of criminal justice reform efforts? Effective reform hinges ... more How can we improve the effectiveness of criminal justice reform efforts? Effective reform hinges on shared understandings of what the problem is and shared visions of what success looks like. But consensus is hard to come by, and there has long been a distinction between "policy talk" or how problems are defined and solutions are promoted, and "policy action" or the design and adoption of certain policies. In this essay, we seek to promote productive thinking and talking about, as well as designing of, effective and sustainable criminal justice reforms. To this end, we offer reflections on underlying conceptual and practical considerations relevant for both criminal justice policy talk and action.

Home mortgage loans today are more readily available in urban neighborhoods and cities are safer ... more Home mortgage loans today are more readily available in urban neighborhoods and cities are safer than has been the case in decades. Community reinvestment advocates and law enforcement authorities have long contended that access to financial services and homeownership are critical to neighborhood stability, all of which contribute to lower crime rates. But no systematic research has explored the relationship between lending and crime. This study utilizes mortgage loan, census, and Uniform Crime Report data to examine the impact of lending on crime in Seattle, Washington communities, controlling for several neighborhood characteristics. We also examine the impact of loans made by lenders covered by the Federal Community Reinvestment Act to determine whether fair lending policy has an independent effect. The findings show that increased mortgage lending is significantly associated with lower crime levels and that the relationship is even stronger for lending by CRA-covered institution...

Crime & Delinquency, 2021

Shaw and McKay advanced social disorganization theory in the 1930s, kick-starting a large body of... more Shaw and McKay advanced social disorganization theory in the 1930s, kick-starting a large body of research on communities and crime. Studies emphasize individual impacts of poverty, residential instability, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity by examining their independent effects on crime, adopting a variable-centered approach. We use a “neighborhood-centered” approach that considers how structural forces combine into unique constellations that vary across communities, with consequences for crime. Examining neighborhoods in Southern California we: (1) identify neighborhood typologies based on levels of poverty, instability, and heterogeneity; (2) explore how these typologies fit within a disorganization framework and are spatially distributed across the region; and (3) examine how these typologies are differentially associated with crime. Results reveal nine neighborhood types with varying relationships to crime.

Contrary to popular opinion, scholarly research has documented that immigrant communities are som... more Contrary to popular opinion, scholarly research has documented that immigrant communities are some of the safest places around. Studies repeatedly find that neighborhood immigrant concentration is either negatively associated with crime and delinquency or not related to crime and delinquency at all. Less well understood, however, is why this is the case. A critical limitation of existing research is the exclusion of measures that capture the intervening processes by which immigrant concentration influences crime and delinquency. The current study begins to address this gap in the literature. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine the relationship between neighborhood immigrant concentration and adolescent violence and to assess the extent to which social capital and personal and vicarious victimization may account for this relationship. Contrary to our expectations, social capital and personal and vicarious victimization do not mediate the r...

A growing body of research documents that, contrary to public opinion, immigrants commit less cri... more A growing body of research documents that, contrary to public opinion, immigrants commit less crime than the native-born and that increased immigration to an area is either associated with lower crime rates or is not associated with crime at all. Scholars offer several theoretical explanations to account for such findings. In this chapter, we review the most prominent of these theoretical arguments, including explanations related to self-selection, ethnic enclaves, the immigration-revitalization thesis, and family structure. At the same time, in light of the sizeable literature at the individual-level which finds that the children of immigrants who are born in the U.S. exhibit higher offending rates than their parents and that assimilated immigrants have higher rates of criminal involvement compared to unassimilated immigrants, in this chapter, we also review a theoretical framework that attempts to explain this finding — downward or segmented assimilation. Our aim in this chapter i...

Justice Evaluation Journal, 2020

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 2018

Objectives: A growing body of research finds that immigration has a null or negative association ... more Objectives: A growing body of research finds that immigration has a null or negative association with neighborhood crime rates. We build on this important literature by investigating the extent to which one theory, institutional completeness theory, may help explain lower crime rates in immigrant communities across the Southern California region. Specifically, we test whether two key measures of institutional completeness—the presence of immigrant/ethnic voluntary organizations in the community and the presence and diversity of immigrant/ethnic businesses in the community—account for lower crime rates in some immigrant communities. Method: Compiling a tract-level data set utilizing various data sources, we estimate negative binomial regression models predicting violent and property crime levels that include measures of institutional completeness while controlling for a range of neighborhood correlates of crime. We also account for possible endogeneity by estimating instrumental vari...

Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2018

Annual Review of Criminology, 2017

Are immigration and crime related? This review addresses this question in order to build a deeper... more Are immigration and crime related? This review addresses this question in order to build a deeper understanding of the immigration-crime relationship. We synthesize the recent generation (1994 to 2014) of immigration-crime research focused on macrosocial (i.e., geospatial) units using a two-pronged approach that combines the qualitative method of narrative review with the quantitative strategy of systematic meta-analysis. After briefly reviewing contradictory theoretical arguments that scholars have invoked in efforts to explain the immigration-crime relationship, we present findings from our analysis, which (a) determined the average effect of immigration on crime rates across the body of literature and (b) assessed how variations in key aspects of research design have impacted results obtained in prior studies. Findings indicate that, overall, the immigration-crime association is negative—but very weak. At the same time, there is significant variation in findings across studies. S...

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2017

Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2016

British Journal of Criminology, 2024

Chapman Law Review 27(2):369-404, 2024

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2012

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2018

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 2023

Societies

Societies, 2023

Sociological Perspectives, 2005

American Journal of Criminal Justice

American Journal of Criminal Justice, 2022

Crime & Delinquency, 2021

Justice Evaluation Journal, 2020

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 2018

Journal of Experimental Criminology, 2018

Annual Review of Criminology, 2017

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2017

Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2016

Olutosin Oduwole was in his dorm room at Southern Illinois University when police knocked on his ... more Olutosin Oduwole was in his dorm room at Southern Illinois University when police knocked on his door one day in 2007. They were there to arrest him. "In my mind I'm thinking, 'Okay, maybe a warrant for a ticket.' I really didn't know what was going on," he says. What was going on was that the police suspected that Olutosin, a college student and aspiring rapper, was on the brink of committing a Virginia Tech-style mass shooting on his campus. He was soon charged with attempting to make a terrorist threat, and was eventually convicted and sent to prison. That conviction was later overturned by an appeals court, but to prosecutors, the case remains a clear example of a tragedy averted. To Tosin and his supporters, however, his prosecution was a fool's errand — an example of bias in how people perceive rappers and rap music. This week on Hidden Brain, we'll meet Olutosin and explore his case from all sides. We'll also consider what one criminologist sees as a troubling rise in prosecutions that use rap lyrics to bolster claims that a defendant is violent.

Issues of race and justice are at the forefront of my TEDx talk, Rap on Trial, which focuses on t... more Issues of race and justice are at the forefront of my TEDx talk, Rap on Trial, which focuses on the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials against young men of color.

A popular perception is that immigration causes higher crime rates. Yet, historical and contempor... more A popular perception is that immigration causes higher crime rates. Yet, historical and contemporary research finds that at the individual level, immigrants are not more inclined to commit crime than the native born. Knowledge of the macro-level relationship between immigration and crime, however, is characterized by important gaps. Most notably, despite the fact that immigration is a macro-level social process that unfolds over time, longitudinal macro-level research on the immigration-crime nexus is virtually nonexistent. Moreover, while several theoretical perspectives posit sound reasons why over-time changes in immigration could result in higher or lower crime rates, we currently know little about the veracity of these arguments. To address these issues, this study investigates the longitudinal relationship between immigration and violent crime across U.S. cities and provides the first empirical assessment of theoretical perspectives that offer explanations of that relationship. Findings support the argument that immigration lowers violent crime rates by bolstering intact (two-parent) family structures