Joshua Fink

Abstract
Immigration to rich democracies grew substantially in the 1990s and 2000s. We investigate whether the rise of immigration influenced the novel and salient outcome of preferences for greater law enforcement spending. We propose that these preferences are consequential for policymaking, reflect popular demand for punitive social control, and represent micro-level preferences underlying the politics of criminal justice. Motivated by literatures on criminal justice politics, minority… Show more

Abstract
Immigration to rich democracies grew substantially in the 1990s and 2000s. We investigate whether the rise of immigration influenced the novel and salient outcome of preferences for greater law enforcement spending. We propose that these preferences are consequential for policymaking, reflect popular demand for punitive social control, and represent micro-level preferences underlying the politics of criminal justice. Motivated by literatures on criminal justice politics, minority threat, and the fear of crime, we examine whether stocks and flows of immigration influence individual-level preferences for greater law enforcement spending. Using International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) data, we analyze between-country variation with multi-level models of 25 countries in 2006, and within-country variation with differences-in-differences (DD) models of 16 countries with available data in both 1996 and 2006. Both multilevel and DD models show that flows of immigration increase preferences for greater law enforcement spending. Indeed, the coefficients for immigration flows are larger than or comparable in magnitude to the coefficients for any other variable, and are robust net of homicide rates and police officers per 100,000. By contrast, the stock of immigrants is not robustly associated with preferences. The results demonstrate that rising immigration contributed to increasing public support for greater law enforcement spending. Show less

We examine the empirical applicability of differential institutional engagement in explaining the youth age structure effect on neighborhood homicide. Using the National Neighborhood Crime Study and Census data, we conduct a multilevel spatial analysis of homicides in 8,307 census tracts. We find support for three indicators of differential institutional engagement (disengaged youth, educational engagement, employment engagement). An additional dimension of institutional engagement (familial… Show more

We examine the empirical applicability of differential institutional engagement in explaining the youth age structure effect on neighborhood homicide. Using the National Neighborhood Crime Study and Census data, we conduct a multilevel spatial analysis of homicides in 8,307 census tracts. We find support for three indicators of differential institutional engagement (disengaged youth, educational engagement, employment engagement). An additional dimension of institutional engagement (familial engagement) operates in the expected direction but is not statistically significant. We argue that previous cross-sectional studies reporting a null or negative relationship between percentage of young and homicide are due to omitting measures of institutional youth (dis)engagement. Show less

Middle-class African American families aren’t spending as much on groceries as white families, and the reason isn’t a lack of money, but a lack of options.

Social class is often discussed in crime and social control research but the influence of class in these contexts is not well understood. Stratification studies have identified effects of socioeconomic status on a diverse collection of important outcomes in many facets of society, but the influence of class on criminality and punishment remains largely unidentified. Scholars attempting to connect class position to criminal behavior or risk of arrest and incarceration have either concluded that… Show more

Social class is often discussed in crime and social control research but the influence of class in these contexts is not well understood. Stratification studies have identified effects of socioeconomic status on a diverse collection of important outcomes in many facets of society, but the influence of class on criminality and punishment remains largely unidentified. Scholars attempting to connect class position to criminal behavior or risk of arrest and incarceration have either concluded that a robust relationship does not exist, or been confronted with inconsistent or weak evidence. Indeed, despite substantial interest in the influence of social class on criminality and punishment, researchers have been unable to make very many empirical connections between the two. The present study advances understanding about the influence of social class on criminality and punishment, addressing limitations of previous research using new approaches and statistical methods across three studies: (1) a study of the relationship between immigration rates and societal preference for increased police protection and law enforcement spending, (2) a study of heterogeneity in the effect of class on latent categories of self-reported delinquency, and finally, (3) a study of illicit drug use and rates of drug arrest among young adults, and how college attendance may contribute punishment inequality for non-violent drug offenses. Show less

Differences in consumption patterns are usually treated as a matter of preferences. In this article, the authors examine consumption from a structural perspective and argue that black households face unique constraints restricting their ability to acquire important goods and services. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys, the authors examine racial differences in total spending and in spending on major categories of goods and services (food, transportation, utilities, housing… Show more

Differences in consumption patterns are usually treated as a matter of preferences. In this article, the authors examine consumption from a structural perspective and argue that black households face unique constraints restricting their ability to acquire important goods and services. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys, the authors examine racial differences in total spending and in spending on major categories of goods and services (food, transportation, utilities, housing, health care, and entertainment). The authors also capture heterogeneous effects of racial stratification across class by modeling racial consumption gaps across household income levels. The results show that black households tend to have lower levels of total spending than their white counterparts and that these disparities tend to persist across income levels. Overall, these analyses indicate that racial disparities in consumption exist independently of other economic disparities and may be a key unexamined factor in the reproduction of racial inequality. Show less