Legacies of Socialization: Investigating the Relationship between Criminal Offending and Racial Socialization

Abstract

The relationship between race and offending is a longstanding focus in criminology, marked by ongoing theoretical development and refinement. In 2011, Unnever and Gabbidon added to this literature with the Theory of African American Offending (TAAO), centering racial socialization in their explanation of why Black individuals do, and do not, commit crime. Racial socialization encompasses the process of external sources providing messaging about race and its broader meaning. Previous studies have tested some of the hypotheses TAAO posits regarding the relationship between racial socialization and criminal offending with mixed findings. Prior work has focused on particular types of racial socialization and has yet to consider whether there are differences in the dosage of exposure (i.e., receiving multiple types of racial socialization) which may explain some of the mixed findings. Moreover, drawing on a broader parenting literature, there is reason to believe that intergenerational factors, such as a parent’s own racial socialization and experiences with criminal legal injustices may influence how they racially socialization their own children. Using data from the Woodlawn study, a longitudinal dataset following a Black first-grade cohort from Chicago starting in 1966, the current study examined the relationship between racial socialization, criminal offending, and the intergenerational transmission of socialization practices. The findings suggest little support for the posited relationship between racial socialization and offending. Although most relationships were in the hypothesized direction, only the absence of racial socialization was significantly associated with higher rates of property crime after accounting for various controls. In contrast, strong and consistent associations were found between the racial socialization respondents received and the socialization they planned on implementing in their parenting, suggesting the continuity of racial socialization throughout generations. Such findings indicate that each measure of racial socialization significantly predicted the planned implementation of the corresponding socialization within one’s parenting. However, this relationship was not moderated by criminal legal injustices as measured by being hassled by the police. The findings of this study help fill the gap of empirical testing of TAAO as well as offer a theoretical extension for generational factors to be considered when examining offending by Black individuals.