Criminal Behaviors Among Minorities: A Social Resistance Perspective

Abstract

The social resistance framework offers an explanation for high-risk and criminal behaviors among non-dominant minority groups. The study explores the generalizability of the framework to minority groups which are marginalized for different reasons, such as immigration, and deep historical national conflicts, and across several criminal behaviors, by surveying a representative sample of more than 1,000 participants from Israel's majority population and four minority groups—Muslims, Jews of Ethiopian origin, immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and ultra-Orthodox Jews. Negative binomial regressions show that social resistance is positively associated with criminal behaviors, controlling for exposure, demographic characteristics, and previous explanations. Additionally, both levels of social resistance and its association with criminal behaviors vary between the different non-dominant minority groups. The study supports the premises of the framework, showing that social resistance plays a role in criminal behaviors among minority groups which are marginalized for different historical reasons.