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Ethnicity

Based on the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards, ethnicity is generally defined as the heritage, nationality group, lineage, or country of birth of an individual or an individual's parents prior to their arrival in the United States. Specifically, OMB standards specify two minimum categories of ethnicity: Hispanic or Latino and not Hispanic or Latino. According to the OMB, race is a socially or culturally defined concept and does not conform to purely biological, anthropological, or genetic criteria. Furthermore, race is considered a separate concept from Hispanic origin (ethnicity), and persons who identify as Hispanic or Latino can be of any race. In addition to Hispanics or Latinos, some broad and commonly recognized ethnic groups in the United States include African Americans, Asian Americans, American Indians, and European Americans. Each of these groups has a unique personal history related to experiences in the United States.

This entry provides a brief background of ethnic groups in the United States; examines some of the research regarding ethnic involvement in offending, incarceration, and victimization; and reviews general theoretical explanations for this involvement. Research directions are also discussed.

Background

In the earlier part of 20th-century America, European immigrants had become well settled in communities throughout the United States, and the general expectation was that certain ethnic groups would exhibit higher crime rates as compared to native-born Americans. Despite research findings to the contrary, concerns related to subsequent immigrant populations persisted. After 1965 a new wave of immigration began, this time including a large influx of Asians, Afro-Caribbeans, and Latinos. In concert with a largely uninterrupted flow of legal and illegal (undocumented) immigrants from Mexico that intensified after 1980, a second major wave of Latina/o immigration occurred during the 1980s; this wave included the Marielito refugees from Cuba and further large-scale emigration from other war-torn areas in Central America. (The term Marielito refers to Cuban refugees who fled to the United States from the Cuban port of Mariel in 1980 to escape political unrest and gain asylum.) By the early 1990s, Latina/o immigration had reached its peak; however, current population estimates indicate that Hispanics/Latinos are the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the United States. Although more recent attempts have been made to close the borders, the U.S. Latina/o population has continued to grow.

According to the census, as of 2000, there were 35.3 million Hispanics or Latinos, 34.7 million African Americans or Blacks (which can include Hispanics reporting their race as Black), 11.9 million Asians, 2.5 million American Indians, and almost 200 million European Americans living in the United States. This increased ethnic diversity has led to a plethora of political and social issues, one of the most controversial being the real or perceived relationship between immigration and crime. Given that Latinos are the largest ethnic group in the United States, ethnicity-centered crime analyses typically reference Latinos, at the exclusion of other ethnic groups.

Offending, Incarceration, and Victimization

Race and ethnicity are often cited as the most important predictor variables of crime and delinquency in the United States. Contemporary criminological research, however, has generally focused on race rather than ethnicity—with Blacks and Whites as the two major groups under examination. Although the social implications and controversies pertaining to race and ethnicity are largely shared, ethnicity should be differentiated from race in criminological research.

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