Racialization of Serious Crime Arrestees: Who Does It and Does It Predict Worry about Victimization in Minority Neighborhoods?

Abstract

Using data from two statewide surveys conducted in 2018 and 2020, this study explores the characteristics of adults who racialize serious crime arrestees and examines if racialization influences worry of victimization in minority neighborhoods. Results show a significant increase in perceptions of Whites as the largest portion of arrestees, suggesting a reduction in racialization. Those who do racialize serious crime arrestees were significantly more likely to express worry of victimization in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods. Our findings suggest the public lacks accurate information about arrests for serious crimes which may perpetuate stereotypes about minorities.

Keywords:

• fear of victimization
• neighborhoods
• perceptions
• race/ethnicity
• racialization of crime

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on this manuscript. We are grateful to the staff at the Penn State Harrisburg Center for Survey Research, Stephanie L. Wehnau, Tim Servinsky, Jr., and Tim Schock, for managing the data collection.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics

Approval was obtained from Pennsylvania State University’s Institutional Review Board.

Notes

1 CSR programmed quotas into the Qualtrics web survey platform to guarantee that the final dataset would be representative of Pennsylvania’s known population by region, and, separately, by age/sex combined categories. Region quotas were developed by totaling Pennsylvania’s population by county and then determining what proportion of the state’s residents lived in the counties separated by each region.

2 Percentage calculated as, % = [exp(B) – 1] * 100