Community (Dis)Organization and Racially Motivated Crime

This article examines the relationship between community structural conditions and racially motivated crimes against blacks and whites. Drawing on six years of police reports, census data, and survey data of Chicago communities, the study evaluates alternative hypotheses about the social organization of racial hate crime derived from social disorganization, resource competition, and defended communities perspectives. Multivariate analyses controlling for spatial autocorrelation reveal that antiblack hate crimes, in contrast to general forms of crime, are more likely in relatively organized communities with high levels of informal social control. Conversely, antiwhite incidents appear more numerous in traditionally disorganized communities, especially those characterized by residential instability.