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The Context of Minority Group Threat: Race, Institutions, and Complying with Hate Crime Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Ryan D. King
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Abstract

A wealth of research suggests a direct association between minority group size and government social control, such as arrest or imprisonment rates. Prior work in this vein, however, gives scant attention to (1) types of law that explicitly address intergroup conflict and (2) regional variation in the salience of minority group threat. At the same time, research on organizational responses to law indicates that institutional linkages to legal environments dictate policy innovation and compliance, yet the relevance of such linkages for law enforcement agencies is less clear. The present research investigates these themes by focusing on law enforcement responses to hate crime in the United States. Data from a sample of large municipal and county policing agencies and their degree of compliance with the federal Hate Crimes Statistics Act are analyzed. Main effects models show that compliance with federal hate crime law is less likely in places with larger black populations, an intriguing finding in light of extant work suggesting that both formal social control and race-based hate crime offending are typically more prevalent where more blacks reside. This effect of black population size on compliance with hate crime law, however, is contingent on region. A positive correlation in the Northeast contrasts with an inverse association in the South. The findings also suggest that organizational facets of law enforcement agencies, notably their engagement in community policing, are associated with compliance. The results elaborate and qualify group threat explanations of government social control and contribute to a burgeoning literature on the utility of organizational theory in the realm of law enforcement.

Type
Articles of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2007 , pp. 189 - 224
Copyright
© 2007 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

An earlier draft of this article was presented at the 2004 meetings of the American Society of Criminology in Nashville, Tennessee. Funding for this research was provided from the Anna Welch Bright Memorial Fellowship, Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota. I thank Elizabeth Heger Boyle, Glenn Deane, Ross Macmillan, Michael Massoglia, Steve Messner, Joel Samaha, Joachim Savelsberg, Allen Wong, and the editor and anonymous reviewers of Law & Society Review for instructive comments and assistance.

References

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Cases Cited

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Statutes Cited

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