DYING TO ACHIEVE THE AMERICAN DREAM: A QUANTITATIVE EXPLORATION OF SERIOUS CRIME IN NEIGHBORHOODS

Serious crime continues to disproportionately impact Black and Brown communities across the United States, where concentrated disadvantage, racialized disinvestment, and social isolation create environments of structural anomie. Despite Institutional Anomie Theory’s (IAT) focus on the breakdown of social institutions under economic strain, dominant formulations often neglect the racialized and spatial nature of structural inequality. This study addresses that gap by extending IAT with a racial-structural perspective and empirically testing its explanatory power in the context of ethno-racially segregated neighborhoods in Baltimore City. Using multiple regression, along with mediation and moderation analyses, the research examines how non-economic institutions buffer or exacerbate serious crime outcomes amid racial residential segregation, spatial isolation, subcultural norms, and structural disadvantage. Additionally, it assesses the limitations of the Gini index in measuring neighborhood level inequality and instead incorporates a measure of income polarization better suited to capturing extreme economic disparities. By focusing on the racial-spatial divide and its role in shaping crime patterns, this study contributes to a more nuanced, empirically grounded understanding of IAT and the geography of serious crime in racially stratified urban contexts.