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The Independent Variables Of Black Population

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Independent variables
Black population was included to the study in order to observe to what extent race (Blacks) is related to outcome variables (violent, property, and Part 2 arrests). We hypothesized that Blacks are disproportionately arrested than Whites. Along with the Black population, we included the population of each block group to standardize their racial compositions.
Studies suggest that there is a reciprocal relationship between the number of arrests and the number of crime in a given area. For this reason, the police more likely to patrol in those areas based on the principles of hot spot policing as discussed above. In order to capture this conception/construct, we employed three proxy variables. The first one is the block …show more content…

At the neighborhood level, we used three variables. The first variable is the number of liquor stores in neighborhoods. A growing body of literature suggests that concentration of liquor stores is related to crime and arrest counts (Conrow, Aldstadt, & Mendoza, 2015; Gorman, Speer, Gruenewald, & Labouvie, 2015; Lipton et al., 2013; White, Gainey, & Triplett, 2012; Zhu, Gorman, & Horel, 2004). The second variable is the percent vacant houses in neighborhoods. Studies suggest that high number of vacant houses is a robust indicator of neighborhood deterioration (Hannon & Cuddy, 2006; Spelman, 1993). These areas cause criminals to gather around for certain criminal purposes (i.e., drug use, selling, burglary) that foster deviant behavior (Hannon & Cuddy, 2006; Newman, 1972).
TABLE 2 IS ABOUT HERE
The last variable is the neighborhood level concentrated disadvantage which includes four different neighborhood level indicators: percent female headed households , percent rental properties , percent violent crimes , and percent households living under poverty line . Since these variables are highly correlated with each other, we created a measure of “concentrated disadvantage” by merging them with the function of factor analysis of SPSS 21.
TABLE 3 IS ABOUT HERE
As presented in Table 3, merging these three variables under one factor is statistically confirmed by the results of the factor analysis. The acceptable value for

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