The Threatening Path to Inequality: A Multilevel Path Analysis of Minority Threat Theory, Threat Mediation, and Displacement on Ethnic Sentencing

Abstract

This study aspires to address three important gaps in the Minority Threat literature by using Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling (MSEM) to develop separate perceptual measures of economic and political threat, exploring the indirect path from population characteristics to sentencing severity via perceived threat, and assessing the transference of immigrant threat onto LatinX offenders. The findings support many, but not all, of the theorized propositions. Specifically, threat indicators definitively load into distinguishable economic and political threat measures. Population composition predicts LatinX sentencing outcomes but is mediated by perceived threat. Evidence also suggests immigrant threat is displaced onto LatinX drug defendants. However, the directionality of these paths is more convoluted than theorized. The corresponding theoretical and methodological implications are explored.