Surveillance Hot Spots: The Geography of Stop and Frisk in Nine U.S. Cities

Police agencies across the United States employ stop and frisk practices as part of aproactive crime-fighting strategy. These tactics are criticized because theydisproportionately implicate Black and Latinx individuals, tend to be concentrated in poorneighborhoods of color, and sometimes involve the detainment of people who are neverarrested. However, existing social science scholarship does not adequately address whysome neighborhoods experience more stop and frisk activity than others. Moreover, it failsto consider the ways that proactive policing is legally contextualized, which is importantbecause legal scholars argue that the threshold for conducting stops is lower in poor,minority neighborhoods than in Whiter, more affluent areas. Additionally, the conversationaround stop and frisk has largely revolved around one jurisdiction – New York City. Thisproject addresses these shortcomings in two stages. First, I use two years of data (2016 and2017) from nine cities in the United States (Austin, Boston, Chicago, Denver, NewOrleans, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.) to examinewhich social processes generate geographic variation in stop and frisk across census tractsand identify characteristics of “surveillance hot spots” – those areas that experienceexceptionally high concentrations of stop and frisk activity. Second, I investigate whetherthe law is implemented differently across neighborhoods by exploring if reasonablesuspicion is established in unique ways in marginalized spaces. I combine three types ofdata to analyze these relationships, including: (1) pedestrian stop and frisk incidents, (2)crime incidents, and (3) demographic data from the Census and American CommunitySurvey. Analyses for stage one consist of estimating spatial regression models to identifywhy some areas becomes surveillance hotspots and experience elevated pedestrian stoprates. Analyses for stage two involve estimating spatial regression models to evaluate therelationships between neighborhood marginality, reasonable suspicion justifications, and“hit rates” of pedestrian stops. This study contributes to academic understanding ofinequality in the criminal justice system by exploring the roots of these inequalities.Moreover, the results have implications for police agencies, including understanding theconsequences that stop and frisk can have for police-community relations.</p

Proactive or Predetermined?: Contextualizing Color-Blind Policing Practices in New York City

Since the widespread growth of proactive policing strategies across the United States during the 1990s, community members and scholars alike have critiqued these law enforcement techniques for their injurious effects on minority communities. Prior research has established that suspect and neighborhood characteristics influence police decision making and stop outcomes, with Blacks and Latinos faring worse than their White counterparts. What remains largely unknown, however, are the underlying mechanisms driving these disparities. This study approaches the problem by conducting a neighborhood-level analysis of the reasons that police officers provided for making 4.5 million stops over a period of twelve years as a part of the New York City Police Department’s stop and frisk policy. Specifically, this analysis examines how the proportions of stops that are made based on appearance varies depending on neighborhood racial and ethnic composition and perceived crime rates. The results indicate that nonbehavioral stop rates are significantly higher in Black and Latino neighborhoods, and that perceived crime is one of the strongest predictors of the proportion of stops in a neighborhood that are made for nonbehavioral reasons. The findings of this study advance the literature on policing by providing evidence that neighborhood characteristics are salient factors in determining policing practices.</p

Racial Threat, Social (Dis)organization, and the Ecology of Police: Towards a Macro-level Understanding of Police Use-of-force in Communities of Color

In this paper, we examine use-of-force incidents as neighborhood processes to understand how rates and levels of use-of-force vary across New York City. We suggest that there are two distinct outcomes of force by the police: number of use-of-force incidents and level of force. Applying theories of racial threat, social disorganization, and Klinger's ecological theory of policing, we conceptualize use-of-force as a neighborhood phenomenon rather than individual events. Our results suggest that rates and levels of force operate in some distinct ways. In particular, while we find that use-of-force is concentrated in Black neighborhoods, and is also more severe in Black neighborhoods, neighborhoods with higher racial and ethnic heterogeneity have decreasing force incidents, but with increasing severity. This may reflect different types of policing, with high rates of low-level police harassment occurring in primarily poorer, Black neighborhoods, and more isolated but severe incidents occurring in middle-income and wealthier mixed neighborhoods

Organizational Practice and Neighborhood Context of Racial Inequality in Police Use-of-Force

Abstract Recent highly-publicized cases of police violence have raised broader discussions around understanding use-of-force as institutional racism. We explore how variation in police practices, including discretionary stops and targeting outdoor spaces, along with racialized understandings of crime and space, help explain use-of-force in neighborhoods. Using stop-and-frisk data from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in Census tracts (N = 12675) between 2006 and 2012, we conduct a spatial analysis and estimate multilevel negative binomial regression models. We find relationships between use-of-force incidents and police organizational practices, where police use force more often in neighborhoods where they employ greater discretionary stops, and in neighborhoods where police conduct proportionally more indoor stops. Our findings also point to understanding stop-and-frisk as a spatial strategy concentrated largely in neighborhoods of color, where police use force more often in Black and Latinx neighborhoods above and beyond the racial disproportionately of individuals stopped. Police also use force more often in neighborhoods where they perceive more crime, even after accounting for the observed crime rate. We suggest that use-of-force by the NYPD is systematically produced through organizational practices paired with shared racialized understandings of crime and space that vary across neighborhoods

(Dis)order in the Court: Examining Neighborhood Disorder Prosecutions in Miami-Dade County

This study examines race, space, perceptions of disorder, and nuisance crime prosecution in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Research has examined nuisance policing, yet little attention has been devoted to nuisance crime prosecutions, especially at the neighborhood level. Aggregating data on defendants arrested for nuisance offenses from 2012 to 2015 up to the neighborhood level, we estimate count models for pretrial detention, case acceptance, conviction, and sentencing outcomes in neighborhoods. We find two patterns of nuisance crime prosecution. Drug disorder prosecutions are concentrated in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods with large Black defendant populations, suggesting a more suppressive treatment of these "marginalized" spaces. In contrast, greater enforcement of homelessness and alcohol nuisance crimes in White non-Hispanic neighborhoods suggests disorder prosecutions are also used to impose order and containment in more economically "prime" spaces. These countervailing patterns highlight the spatial contingency of nuisance enforcement, whereby prosecutors differentially enforce nuisance crimes in prime and marginalized spaces

Shifting the Practice of Coercive Penal Care Over Time in a Problem-Solving Court

While problem-solving courts represent one area in which rehabilitative efforts have expanded within correctional settings as “coercive penal care,” still unexplored is how the blend of rehabilitative and punitive practices might evolve over time. By conducting interviews and observing a new reentry court, we explore how the court\u27s navigation of coercive penal care transforms over time. We argue that initially, the introduction of rehabilitative goals was mostly subverted by the court\u27s existing punitive criminal legal system and organizational structure. This occurred through court actors prioritizing internal over external goals and metrics in the program, and articulating self-responsibilization narratives for success. As the court progressed, court actors shifted toward emphasizing individualism. Increased individualism occurred in recognition of the complex barriers that participants faced, but presented a double-edged sword: actors focused more on the individual needs of participants beyond program requirements, but also increased individual accountability by participants. This greater emphasis on individualization also allowed court actors to resolve sometimes competing rehabilitative and punitive goals through increased discretion

Unequal Treatment: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Miami-Dade Criminal Justice

This report analyzed data on all adult criminal defendants from 2010 to 2015, examining individual and neighborhood racial and ethnic disparities across multiple decision points within Miami-Dade County's criminal justice system: arrest, bond, and pretrial detention, charging and disposition, and sentencing. The analysis uncovered racial and ethnic disparities at each of these decision points. Disparities were also found at every decision point that, regardless of ethnicity, resulted in disadvantages for Black defendants and neighborhoods while resulting in advantages for White defendants and neighborhoods