Segregation and Hispanic Homicide

As the overall population of Hispanics within the United States haseclipsed that of African Americans, a mounting concern has developed regarding the risein Hispanic lethal violence as a result of social and economic inequality. One means tomeasure this inequality is in the form of segregation. Research indicates that in manyHispanic communities, their levels of segregation from the White non-Hispanic populationare similar to that of African Americans. Although a multitude of previous studies havelooked at the impact of segregation among African Americans, the literature remainsunder-represented in terms of multi-city macro-level analyses among Hispanics. Thiscurrent study extends the analysis of segregation’s effects on lethal violence to thispopulation. To this end, two measures of segregation were used, the index ofdissimilarity and exposure. Using data from the census and the Centers for DiseaseControl (CDC) mortality files, negative binominal regression models were created using asample of 236 U.S. cities. The results indicated that both measures of segregation showa strong positive influence on rates of Hispanic homicides