Segregation and Group Threat: Specifying Hispanic-White Punishment Disparity

Evidence of racial disparity in punishment has been pervasive in the U.S. criminal justice system. Furthermore, a growing body of literature suggests that racial and ethnic disparities in criminal punishment, typically motivated by group threat perspectives, vary in relation to social and contextual conditions of court jurisdictions. One important factor relevant to minority threat and intergroup contact is segregation, yet research on social contexts and criminal sentencing has largely ignored this feature of local social structure. However, segregation might condition the effects of minority population size on dominant group threat responses in social control. Focusing on Hispanic-White segregation, we assess competing hypotheses regarding segregation’s role in conditioning Hispanic-White punishment disadvantage. Pennsylvania, which has recently undergone significant population change related to these processes, presents a unique and valuable context for study. Analyses of statewide sentencing data from 2013–2017 along with Census and American Community Survey data, reveal that Hispanic-White residential segregation seems to foster greater Hispanic punishment disadvantage. Moreover, segregation specifies the association between local Hispanic population size and Hispanic-White incarceration disparity. In counties with both greater than average Hispanic population share and greater segregation, Hispanic defendants faced even greater incarceration disparities.