Racial Tensions and School Crime

Abstract

This article uses data on school crime and other characteristics from a study of U.S. public schools to contribute to our knowledge about the extent and correlates of school violence and property crime. Following a brief review of the literature, the authors describe their efforts to examine the link between racial tensions and school crime. Relying on the macro version of general strain theory (GST) developed by Agnew and racial contact/threat perspectives on school race relations, a more specific purpose for their article is to determine the extent to which school-based crime is at least a partial function of extant racial tensions in schools. Analyses of violent and property-related incidents across a weighted sample of 1,936 middle and high schools indicate that racial tensions is a significant, positive correlate of both types of school crime, net of other school climate, organizational, and demographic characteristics. They discuss these findings and describe directions for future research with these data.