Leymon 12
Both Hypothesis 4 and Hypothesis 5 also find considerable support in the racial threat literature. The
theory suggests that minorities are perceived as a “threat” to the majority population (Jacobs and O’Brien,
1998; Parker, Stults, and Rice, 2005). Research has shown that African Americans are seen (overtly or
contextually) as “criminals”, particularly as “violent criminals” and as more African Americans enter a
community, the perception of physical and social threat increases (Blumer, 1958; Kent and Jacobs, 2005).
This perceived threat translates into more arrests, charges, convictions, and longer sentences for
minorities and this will translate into higher imprisonment rates (Jacobs and Carmichael, 2001; Parker,
Stults, and Rice, 2005). The perceived threat does not need to be related to a real threat, and thus
minorities may be imprisoned at higher rates simply because they make up a larger portion of the
population (Quillian, 1995). The perceived “threat” can take the form of either a threat of higher criminal
activity and thus minorities will be targeted as “the criminals” or a threat to social, political and/or
economic dominance and again minorities could be targeted by the criminal justice system as a form of
social and economic control (Kent and Jacobs, 2005).
DATA AND METHODS
MEASUREMENTS
This study utilizes state level data covering each year between 1978 and 1998 with data available for
all 50 states. This allows for assessment of the impacts of sentencing changes on imprisonment rates over
time. While data on total imprisonment is available beyond 1998 on a state level, state level data for
independent racial groups is not available beyond 1998. Furthermore, data for whites and African
Americans imprisonment is not available prior to 1978 and is not available prior to 1981 for Hispanics.
Washington DC is often included in analysis of this type (treated as a “fifty-first state”), but was excluded
as data because the entire time period in question was not complete for this data.
2
Furthermore, in the
analysis of the aggregated racial/ethnic groups Vermont was excluded from the analysis, as the state did
not report racial composition of their prisons in most of the years under investigation. Data for the five
dependent variables, African-American prison populations per 1000 African-American, white prison
2
Along with incomplete data, Washington DC stopped housing its own prisoners in 2001.
Convention