Objectives: The racial threat perspective argues that racial minorities are subjected to greater punishment in places with large or growing minority populations. However, prior research has focused largely on Black populations while devoting limited attention to potential “Latino threat” or “immigrant threat” effects. To address these gaps, this study explores the effects of racial, ethnic, and immigrant threat on sentence disposition (jail, prison, or community corrections) and sentence length. Methods: Using 2000 through 2006 data from the Florida Department of Corrections Guideline database, we use multilevel modeling techniques to explore the effects of racial, ethnic, and immigrant threat on state criminal sentencing. Results: The results provide support for racial/ethnic threat theory among Black but not Latino defendants. Black defendants are more likely to be sentenced to prison and are given longer sentences in counties with growing Black populations. In contrast, Latino sentences are not significantly influenced by Latino population growth. Results provide no support for immigrant threat positions. Conclusions: Overall, our findings offer a complex picture for racial/ethnic and immigrant threat. However, one pattern remains clear. Within Florida courts, Black defendants continue to be the prime targets for effects of racial threat and resulting disadvantages in criminal sentencing.

An extensive body of research indicates that community levels of crime are either unaffected by levels of immigration or that immigration is associated with lower, not higher, rates of crime. According to the “immigrant revitalization” perspective, the protective effects of immigration are largely indirect, working through neighborhood-level processes, such as social networks, social capital, and collective efficacy. However, these mediating effects have received little empirical attention in the immigration–crime literature. Using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, the current study seeks to extend research on immigration and crime by assessing the mediating effects of neighborhood friendship and kinship ties and collective efficacy in immigration–violence relationships. Similar to previous studies, we find that the total effect of immigrant concentration on homicide and perceptions of violence is null. However, examining the indirect pathways reveals that immigration works in complex ways, with both positive and negative influences on violence that ultimately manifest as a nonsignificant effect. Specifically, immigrant concentration is associated with lower levels of collective efficacy, thereby increasing violence, but it is simultaneously linked to stronger friendship and kinship networks, which in turn reduces violence. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Public and political discourse has routinely suggested that immigration is linked to higher community levels of violence and drug problems. In contrast to these claims, research has consistently shown that immigration is not associated with greater violence at the macro level. However, few studies have examined the links between immigration flows and community drug problems. The current study seeks to address this gap in research by providing a county‐level longitudinal analysis of immigration and drug overdose deaths both overall and by substance type for the 2000 to 2015 period and provides an analysis of homicide for comparison with prior immigration–crime research. In addition, this analysis compares immigration–overdose relationships across immigrant destination types. The current project relies on overdose and homicide data drawn from the Centers for Disease Control's Restricted Access Multiple Cause of Death Mortality files combined with data on county social, economic, health, and legal contexts drawn from multiple macro‐level data sources. Findings reveal that immigration is not associated with higher levels of overdose or homicide deaths, and when effects are significant, immigration is linked to lower levels of overdose mortality across multiple substances and destination types.

A growing body of research has begun to identify the social and ecological predictors of community overdose rates. However, questions remain about these relationships, and it is unclear whether the predictors of community overdose concentrations mirror those of other fatal social problems, such as homicide and suicide. Drawing on three leading ecological theories of overdose concentrations, the present study provides a longitudinal macro-level analysis of the community “determinants of death” for overdose (overall and by substance type), homicide, and suicide. Specifically, the authors use Centers for Disease Control and Prevention restricted-access mortality data, combined with measures of community social, economic, legal, and health indicators for the period from 2000 to 2015. Findings from time-series models reveal that county concentrations of overdose are linked to multiple theoretically driven factors—including opioid prescription rates, population decline, county health problems, and manufacturing employment—with several key similarities in the determinants of death across overdose, homicide, and suicide.