09-11-2019, 10:21 AM
Violent crime in Milwaukee is unequal, victimizing African American residents more often than their white counterparts.
Criminologists and other academics have long focused on individual choices and risk factors, such as illegally carrying a gun or selling drugs, when it came to explaining who gets shot and why — but a growing body of research is showing systemic factors may matter more.
When public health experts wanted to figure out how violent crime is linked with structural racism, they looked at decades-old housing maps. Their results were published last year in the journal Social Science and Medicine.
The maps, created by the federal government in the 1930s, explicitly used race to determine creditworthiness and investment risk within neighborhoods. Areas deemed “unworthy of economic investment by virtue of the races, ethnicities, and religions of their residents†were shaded red, the study said.
The researchers examined Philadelphia and found those redlined areas today are more likely to be the places where violence is most common.
In Milwaukee, the same pattern appears. Present-day census tracts donâ€t match up perfectly with the historic redlined neighborhoods.Â
But of the tracts that fall mostly within the old red boundary, 36% of residents†incomes are below the poverty line — 9 percentage points worse than the citywide poverty rate of 27%.
From 2014 to 2018, the homicide rate in these neighborhoods was 13% worse than the number for the city as a whole, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis found. The nonfatal shooting rate was 28% worse than the citywide average.
The researchers in Philadelphia carefully noted their work did not prove the “insidious confluence†of structural racism and concentrated violence. But, they said, it gave “historical dimension†to earlier studies that found racial disparities are “as much an issue of place as they are of people.â€
The maps reinforced and deepened segregation that persists today. That segregation is connected with poverty and crime. And it leads to unequal victimization. Last year, a black resident in Milwaukee was eight times as likely as a white resident to be shot and killed, according to the Journal Sentinel analysis.
Segregation as a risk factor for homicide. A black person living in Wisconsin is 22 times more likely than a white person to be fatally shot. A recent study out of Boston University tried to figure out why the disparities vary so much among states.
Researchers used 25 years of data and controlled for unemployment, incarceration, education levels, poverty, homeownership and single-parent households. They found one variable that seems to explain the statistics... Segregation.Â
“In other words, racial segregation is a risk factor for firearm homicide,†said Michael Siegel, a physician and public health researcher at Boston University. For every 10 point increase in the segregation index, the gap between the black-white firearm homicide rate increased by nearly 40%, the study found.
There is much more >>> https://projects.jsonline.com/news/2019/...crime.html
Criminologists and other academics have long focused on individual choices and risk factors, such as illegally carrying a gun or selling drugs, when it came to explaining who gets shot and why — but a growing body of research is showing systemic factors may matter more.
When public health experts wanted to figure out how violent crime is linked with structural racism, they looked at decades-old housing maps. Their results were published last year in the journal Social Science and Medicine.
The maps, created by the federal government in the 1930s, explicitly used race to determine creditworthiness and investment risk within neighborhoods. Areas deemed “unworthy of economic investment by virtue of the races, ethnicities, and religions of their residents†were shaded red, the study said.
The researchers examined Philadelphia and found those redlined areas today are more likely to be the places where violence is most common.
In Milwaukee, the same pattern appears. Present-day census tracts donâ€t match up perfectly with the historic redlined neighborhoods.Â
But of the tracts that fall mostly within the old red boundary, 36% of residents†incomes are below the poverty line — 9 percentage points worse than the citywide poverty rate of 27%.
From 2014 to 2018, the homicide rate in these neighborhoods was 13% worse than the number for the city as a whole, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis found. The nonfatal shooting rate was 28% worse than the citywide average.
The researchers in Philadelphia carefully noted their work did not prove the “insidious confluence†of structural racism and concentrated violence. But, they said, it gave “historical dimension†to earlier studies that found racial disparities are “as much an issue of place as they are of people.â€
The maps reinforced and deepened segregation that persists today. That segregation is connected with poverty and crime. And it leads to unequal victimization. Last year, a black resident in Milwaukee was eight times as likely as a white resident to be shot and killed, according to the Journal Sentinel analysis.
Segregation as a risk factor for homicide. A black person living in Wisconsin is 22 times more likely than a white person to be fatally shot. A recent study out of Boston University tried to figure out why the disparities vary so much among states.
Researchers used 25 years of data and controlled for unemployment, incarceration, education levels, poverty, homeownership and single-parent households. They found one variable that seems to explain the statistics... Segregation.Â
“In other words, racial segregation is a risk factor for firearm homicide,†said Michael Siegel, a physician and public health researcher at Boston University. For every 10 point increase in the segregation index, the gap between the black-white firearm homicide rate increased by nearly 40%, the study found.
There is much more >>> https://projects.jsonline.com/news/2019/...crime.html