ABSTRACT
But today, Latino immigration has given rise to diverse, multiethnic American cities, creating new immigrant-serving enterprises and revital izing impoverished barrios, some in communities that had been pre dominantly Latino for several generations.6 Social analysis in strictly Black and White categories is no longer able to capture the true nature and extent of ethnicity in contemporary urban life, a notion with par ticular relevance for studies on the causes and consequences of urban crime. Moreover, the burgeoning populations of immigrants and Lati nos led some to conclude that the scope of Latino crime had expanded and that Latinos should have similar impacts as turn-of-the-twentiethcentury immigrants, or at least should have experienced crime in the same fashion as other poor ethnic minority groups in contemporary
America.7 Although the Latino population has grown, why hasn’t it suffered this fate?
