By Kristin Turney, Alexander Testa, & Dylan B. Jackson

Objective. The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between mother–youth closeness and stigma stemming from police contact. Background. Research increasingly indicates that stigma stemming from police–youth encounters links police contact to compromised outcomes among youth, though less is known about the correlates of stigma stemming from this criminal legal contact. Close mother–youth relationships, commonly understood to be protective for youth outcomes, may be one factor that buffers against stop-related stigma, especially the anticipation of stigma. Method. We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a sample of youth born in urban areas around the turn of the 21st century, to examine the relationship between mother–youth closeness and stop-related stigma. Results. We find that mother–youth closeness is negatively associated with stop-related anticipated stigma but not stop-related experienced stigma. We also find that the relationship between mother–youth closeness and stop-related anticipated stigma is concentrated among youth experiencing a non-intrusive stop. Conclusion. Close mother–youth relationships may protect against stigma stemming from criminal legal contact.

 Journal of Marriage and Family 85(2):477–493. 2023

By Kristin Turney

Research shows youth police contact— a stressor experienced by more than one-quarter of urban-born youth by age 15—has deleterious mental health consequences for both youth and their mothers. Less is known about how youth’s fathers respond to this police contact, despite differences in how men and women respond to stress and relate to their children. I use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to investigate the association between youth police stops and depression among youth’s fathers. Results show that fathers of youth stopped by the police, compared to fathers of youth not stopped by the police, are more likely to report depression, net of father and youth characteristics associated with selection into experiencing youth police stops. This association is concentrated among non-Black fathers and fathers of girls. The findings highlight how the repercussions of youth criminal legal contact extend to youth’s fathers and, more broadly, suggest that future research incorporates the responses of men connected to those enduring criminal legal contact. 

  J Urban Health (2023) 100: 269–278 pages

By Kristin Turney

Objective. The goal of this study is to examine the association between parental incarceration and parent–youth closeness. Background. Despite the established complex repercussions of incarceration for relationships between adults, and the well-known intergenerational consequences of parental incarceration, little is known about how incarceration structures intergenerational relationships between parents and children. Methods. In this article, I use data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 3408), a cohort of children followed over a 15-year period, to examine how parental incarceration is associated with relationships between youth and their (incarcerated and non-incarcerated) parents. Results. Results suggest three conclusions. First, parental incarceration is negatively associated with closeness between youth and their incarcerated parents. Second, the timing of first parental incarceration is important. Parental incarceration in early or middle childhood is negatively associated with closeness between youth and their incarcerated parent, and parental incarceration in adolescence is positively associated with closeness between youth and their non-incarcerated parent. Third, relationships between parents themselves explain some of the association between paternal incarceration in early childhood and father–youth closeness. Conclusion. Taken together, these findings advance our understanding of both the relational and intergenerational consequences of criminal legal contact and our understanding of the correlates of parent–youth relationships and, in doing so, highlights how family ecological contexts contribute to inequality.

‍ J. Marriage Fam. 2023; 1–23 pages

By Kristin Turney

 A family systems perspective suggests the repercussions of adolescent police contact likely extend beyond the adolescent to proliferate to the broader family unit, but little research investigates these relationships. I used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal survey of children who became adolescents during an era of proactive policing, to examine the relationship between adolescent police contact and four aspects of family life: mothers’ parenting stress, mothers’ monitoring, mothers’ discipline, and the mother-adolescent relationship. Adolescent police contact, especially invasive police contact, is associated with increased parenting stress, increased discipline, and decreased engagement, net of adolescent and family characteristics that increase the risk of police contact. There is also evidence that suggests adolescent police contact is more consequential for family life when mothers themselves had experienced recent police contact. These findings suggest the repercussions of police contact extend beyond the individual and proliferate to restructure family relationships.  

Social Problems 70(1): 2023, 256–273

By Kristin Turney

Police stops are a pervasive form of criminal justice contact among adolescents, particularly adolescents of color, that have adverse repercussions for mental health. Yet, the mental health consequences of adolescent police stops likely proliferate to parents of adolescents exposed to this form of criminal justice contact. In this article, I conceptualize adolescent police stops as a stressor, drawing on the stress process perspective to examine how and under what conditions this form of criminal justice contact damages the mental health of adolescents’ mothers. The results, based on data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, suggest three conclusions. First, the mental health consequences of adolescent police stops proliferate, increasing the likelihood of depression and anxiety among adolescents’ mothers. These relationships persist across modeling strategies that adjust for observed confounders, including adolescent characteristics such as delinquency and substance use. Second, the relationship between adolescent police stops and mothers’ mental health is contingent, concentrated among mothers with prior exposure to the criminal justice system (either via themselves or their adolescents’ fathers). Third, mothers’ emotional support buffers the relationship between adolescent police stops and mothers’ mental health. Taken together, this research highlights the role of police exposure as a stressor that is experienced vicariously and that has contingent consequences and, accordingly, documents the expansive and proliferating repercussions of police contact. Given the concentration of police contact among marginalized adolescents, including adolescents of color, these findings highlight another way the criminal justice system exacerbates structural inequalities. 

Social Forces 100(3):1142–1169.2022, 28 p.

By Hossein Zare, Andrea N. Ponce, Rebecca Valek , Niloufar Masoudi , Daniel Webster, Roland J. Thorpe Jr. Michelle Spencer, Cassandra Crifasi , and Darrell Gaskin

Social vulnerability, race, and place are three important predictors of fatal police shootings. This research offers the first assessment of these factors at the zip code level. Methods: The 2015−2022 Mapping Police Violence and Washington Post Fatal Force Data (2015 −2022) were used and combined with the American Community Survey (2015−2022). The social vulnerability index (SVI) was computed for each zip code by using indicators suggested by CDC, then categorized into low-, medium-, and high-SVI. The analytical file included police officers who fatally shot 6,901 individuals within 32,736 zip codes between 2015 and 2022. Negative Binomial Regression (NBRG) models were run to estimate the association between number of police shootings and zip code SVI, racial composition, and access to guns using 2015-2022 data. Results: Moving from low-SVI to high-SVI revealed the number of fatal police shootings increased 8.3 times, with the highest increases in Blacks (20.4 times), and Hispanics (27.1 times). The NBRG showed that moderate-, and high-SVI zip codes experienced higher fatal police shootings by 1.97, and 3.26 times than low-SVI zip codes; zip code racial composition, working age population, number of violent crimes, number of police officers and access to a gun, were other predictors of fatal police shootings. Conclusions: Social vulnerability and racial composition of a zip code are associated with fatal police shooting, both independently and when considered together. What drives deadly police shootings in the United States is not one single factor, but rather complex interactions between social-vulnerability, race, and place that must be tackled synchronously. Action must be taken to address underlying determinants of disparities in policing.

American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 68, Issue 1, January 2025, Pages 126-136

By P. Jeffrey Brantingham , George Tita and Denise Herz

The City of Los Angeles Mayor’s Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development (GRYD) program was conceived as a comprehensive response to gang violence. Unlike most comprehensive approaches, suppression was excluded from the primary model. Program services including community engagement, gang prevention and intervention services, and street-based violence interruption, were formally launched in late 2011. Strict geographic eligibility criteria mean that GRYD services were available in some Los Angeles communities and not others. Using the geographic structure of GRYD, we use a place-based difference-in-differences model to estimate the effect of GRYD services on both violent and property crime. The analyses suggest a reduction in violent crime of around 18% in areas exposed to GRYD Comprehensive Strategy services, including aggravated assault and robbery. Similar declines are not observed in property crimes including burglary and car theft. Comparison with evaluations of placed-based gang injunctions demonstrate that GRYD is able to achieve nearly one-half of the reductions in crime without a suppression focus.

Justice Evaluation Journal

Volume 4, 2021 - Issue 2

By Dongpil Son · Boyeong Im · Jaeseok Her · Woojin Park · Seok-Jin Kang · Seung-Nam Kim

Nighttime activities have significantly increased in cities, underscoring the growing importance of nocturnal lighting in fostering emotional stability and comfort of people. This study utilized simulated virtual reality (SVR) technologies to investigate the relationship between lighting environment and fear of crime in narrow residential streets. We created virtual models replicating a typical low-rise residential area in Seoul, Korea, diversified into eight environments representing different times of day with corresponding lighting scenarios (natural light, streetlamps, and interior building lights). One hundred recruited young adult participants were asked to experience four randomly selected environments and rate their perceived level of fear of crime while wearing a head-mounted display. The ordinal logistic regression analysis demonstrated that fear of crime was influenced not only by natural light but also significantly by artificial lights on streets and inside buildings.

Specifically, while a decrease in natural illuminance contributes to an increase in fear of crime in general (especially shortly after sunset), the role of natural illuminance was minimized immediately after streetlamp activation. After p.m. 8:30, when other light sources are relatively constant, fear of crime was significantly influenced by the proportion of interior building lights turned on. In residential areas where preventing light pollution is also crucial, a comprehensive strategy is necessary rather than solely focusing on improving illuminance levels to create safe and comfort lighting environment

Virtual Reality (2025) 29:8

Racial Disparities in Arrests in Santa Clara County, California, 1980

By Sophia Hunt, Micayla Bozeman, and Matthew Clair

This report examines racial/ethnic disparities in arrests in Santa Clara County, California, from 1980 to 2019. Over the past forty years, felony and misdemeanor arrest rates have declined for all racial groups, but racial disparities have persisted and, in some cases, increased. Black residents, though a small percentage of the population, are disproportionately susceptible to being arrested. In the 2010s, the Black arrest rate was 5.4 times the White arrest rate—the highest BlackWhite ratio in arrest rates observed over the four decades. Nevertheless, as overall arrest rates declined over this period, the absolute difference between Black and White arrest rates substantially narrowed. Hispanic residents are also disproportionately arrested, but to a lesser degree than Black residents. Racial/ethnic disparities are most pronounced with respect to felony arrests; the Black-White ratio in felony arrest rates peaked at 7.2 in the 1980s and declined to 6.6 in the 2010s. Racial/ethnic disparities also exist, to a lesser degree, with respect to misdemeanor arrests. We find small racial differences in arrest dispositions (or, what law enforcement does with a person following arrest). However, it is noteworthy that, across all four decades, Black and Hispanic felony arrests are slightly more likely than White felony arrests to result in release due to “insufficient grounds to file a complaint.” This pattern could suggest that law enforcement officers are more likely to arrest Black and Hispanic residents for reasons that law enforcement entities later determine do not rise to the level sufficient for filing a complaint with the District Attorney’s Office.

Court Listening Project, Report No. 3,( c/o Matthew Clair, Stanford University), 2022. 30p.

By John A. Shjarback

Broader public, media, and scholarly interest in police shootings of residents in the United States has been a constant since 2014. This interest followed a number of high-profile deadly force incidents, including those leading to the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, OH. In the decade since, researchers from a variety of academic disciplines have learned much about the scope and nature of police shootings. While US police as a whole use their firearms more than most other countries, rates of police shootings of residents vary across states.

The purpose of this report is to examine police shootings of residents—including both fatal and nonfatal, injurious incidents—using a comparative lens. More specifically, it explores rates of police shootings in the states comprising the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium (RGVRC)—Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island—with the rest of the country. These comparisons suggest an association between levels of firearm prevalence/availability in the general population, as well as related laws and rates of police shootings per capita. The majority of RGVRC states possess the lowest rates of police shootings of residents, which appears to at least partially be a function of low levels of firearm prevalence/availability among residents and strong laws and legislation related to guns.

Albany, NY: Rockefeller Institute of Government, 2024. 20p.

By No Name Kitchen

In the spring of 2020, the pandemic sealed borders and blinded those monitoring human rights violations along the Bosnian-Croatian border. Amid this backdrop, the Croatian authorities seemingly believed they could act with impunity. They were mistaken. NNK’s team activated its local network, connecting with neighbors to identify illegal pushbacks. On May 6th, in Poljana, Bosnia, sources reported a group of people had been forcibly returned, their heads marked with orange crosses. The men had their money, shoes, and mobile phones stolen. The use of spray paint –a religious symbol forced onto these predominantly Muslim men– suggests a disturbing mix of humiliation and psychological warfare. This case marked the beginning of a series of pushbacks involving an alarming level of torture and sadism, disconnected from any genuine border protection or respect for fundamental human rights. Croatian and European authorities have long justified pushbacks, citing bilateral agreements that bypass judicial due process and International Law. Likewise, the use of coercive force has been also legitimized under the guise of maintaining order. However, painting someone’s head with spray paint is neither defensible, legal, nor ethical, as it is robbing people of their phones, shoes, glasses, medicines, and passports and then burning these items in pyres. This is exactly what is happening today. Between October 2023 and August 2024, NNK conducted an extensive field investigation, uncovering evidence of these “burn piles”– secret locations where Croatian border police destroy the personal belongings of people attempting to migrate for a better life. This report compiles the evidence, survivor testimonies, and details the systematic and brutal modus operandi, aiming to push the Croatian administration towards accountability while urging European authorities and civil society to reflect on why would a border agent feel justified in taking a pair of glasses from a teenager fleeing war, leaving him blind in a forest at night, and then tossing those glasses into the flames to convert his hope into ashes? This border regime fails: it punishes the innocent while granting impunity to the undeserving. It is time to react. Time for safe and dignified routes.

Bloody Borders, 2024. 40.p.

By Hannah D. McManus,  Robin S. Engel,  Jennifer Calnon Cherkauskas,  Sarah C. Light, Amanda M. Shoulberg,

Despite evidence of gradually declining rates of violent crime over the last several decades, violence continues to pose a serious problem for many urban communities (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2018). Indeed, recent trends in violent crime within the United States suggest violence is a chronic problem, producing substantial costs to communities and individuals, and requiring immediate response from a coalition of stakeholders. As such, finding effective interventions to target violence is essential for restoring communities and enhancing public health and safety. This literature review examines the available empirical evidence on a variety of police-led violence reduction strategies (offender-focused, place-based, and community-based), as well as community-led, public health-based violence prevention interventions. The purpose of this review is to summarize for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers the state of the evidence regarding the effectiveness of various approaches to reduce violence, highlight implications for practice (see Appendix A), and identify the remaining gaps in this knowledge needing to be addressed by future research.   

Cincinnati, OH: Center for Police Research and Policy, University of Cincinnati, 2020. 97p.

By Timothy Hsiao

Critics of American policing often make the claim that it is a direct descendant of antebellum slave patrols, the mostly voluntary groups organized to capture runaway slaves and stifle slave rebellions in the early eighteenth century. Consider just a few examples:

• “The origins of modern-day policing can be traced back to the ‘Slave Patrol.’” — NAACP

• “Policing itself started out as slave patrols. We know that.” — Rep. James Clyburn.

• “Slave patrols . . . morphed directly into police.” — Nikole HannahJones.

• “[M]odernized police actually emerged in the South during slavery— they literally were slave catchers.” — Scalawag Magazine.

Even pro-law enforcement organizations such as the National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C. have come to accept this claim. According to one criminal justice textbook, it is “widely recognized that law enforcement in the 20th-century South evolved directly from these 18th and 19th-century slave patrols.”

While it is true that slave patrols were a form of American law enforcement that existed alongside other forms of law enforcement, the claim that American policing “traces back” to, “started out” as, or “evolved directly from,” slave patrols, or that slave patrols “morphed directly into” policing, is false. This widespread pernicious myth falsely asserts a causal relationship between slave patrols and policing and intimates that modern policing carries on a legacy of gross injustice. There is no evidence for either postulate.

In order to demonstrate causation, one must show that modern policing drew its distinctive practices and structure from slave patrols. But the evidence shows that American law enforcement—whether in the form of sheriffs, town watches, constables, or police—all emerged from distinctly English influences. Both slave patrols and modern police departments drew from these influences. The fact that the latter did so after the former does not mean that the latter emerged from the former.

New York: National Association of Scholars, 2023. 6p.

.By Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Community Violence Can Be Prevented All people want to be healthy, safe, and connected to other people. We all want to have access to life opportunities, including education and employment, to become valued members of communities and society, and to live our lives free from violence. To support community violence prevention and promote health and safety, the Division of Violence Prevention (DVP) in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed the Community Violence Prevention Resource for Action (or Prevention Resource, for short). DVP’s vision is to have a violence-free society in which all people and all communities are safe, healthy, and thriving. Violence is preventable using a public health approach. This includes bringing together partners and community members to consider local needs and the best available evidence to implement violence prevention strategies. About this Prevention Resource for Action Community violence happens in public places, such as streets or parks, between people who may or may not know each other. Examples include assaults, fights among groups, homicides, and fatal and nonfatal shootings. This resource is informed by research and conversations with community members, people who have experienced violence, and other partners.a It is an update to the Youth Violence Prevention Resource for Action.  It includes evidence for preventing violence experienced by youth (ages 10-24), which is now under the larger community violence topic. In this update, we expand the evidence to include examples for preventing violence experienced by young adults (ages 25-34). Young adults ages 20-24 have the highest homicide rate. They are closely followed by young adults between the ages of 25-29, 30-34, and then teens ages 15-19.8 Over the past 40 years, we have learned a lot about preventing violence, but there is still more work to do. This resource is intended to help communities and states prevent violence before it starts and lessen the harms of violence that occur by describing the best available evidence for community violence prevention. DVP looks forward to learning from communities and states about how this resource is being used and how it can be improved so that all communities are safe, healthy, and thriving. This Prevention Resource has three components. The first component is the strategy, or the direction or actions needed to prevent community violence. The second component is the approach, or specific ways to advance the strategy through policies, programs, or practices. The third component is the evidence for each approach in preventing community violence or the conditions or behaviors that increase risk for community violence. The examples provided in this resource are not intended to be a comprehensive list of evidence-based programs, policies, or practices for each approach. Rather, they illustrate models that have been shown to prevent community violence or impact conditions or behaviors that increase risk or protect against violence    

Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  2024. 104p.  

By Joanna Wang, Don Weatherburn, Wai-Yin Wan

Aim: To examine the long-term effect of two routine police activities on property and violent crime in NSW.

Method: Police move-on directions and person searches as well as property and violent crimes were extracted from the NSW Police Force’s Computerised Operational Policing System. We investigate the relationship between police activity and crime using panel of 17 Local Area Commands (LACs) over the period 2001 to 2013. To estimate the long-run relationship, panel models of Pooled Mean Group and Mean Group were applied to allow for differing effects between LACs.

Results: We estimated a significant and strongly negative long-run relationship between both indices of police activity (move-on directions and person searches) and each of break and enter, motor vehicle theft and robbery. The person search activity is negatively related to assault, but the effect is weak; with a 10 per cent increase in person searches only producing a 0.29 per cent fall in assaults. No significant long-run relationship was found between assault and move-on directions.

Conclusion: Sustained increases in police activity, whether in the form of move-on directions or person searches, do appear to help suppress break and enter, motor vehicle theft and robbery but do not appear to help in reducing assault.

(Crime & Justice Bulletin No. 225). Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.  2019. 12p.

By Alex Chohlas-Wood, Marissa Gerchick, Sharad Goel, Aziz Z. Huq, Amy Shoemaker, Ravi Shroff, and Keniel Yao

 We describe and apply three empirical approaches to identify superfluous police activity, unjustified racially disparate impacts, and limits to regulatory interventions. First, using cost-benefit analysis, we show that traffic and pedestrian stops in Nashville and New York City disproportionately impacted communities of color without achieving their stated public safety goals. Second, we address a longstanding problem in discrimination research by presenting an empirical approach for identifying “similarly situated” individuals and, in so doing, quantify potentially unjustified disparities in stop policies in New York City and Chicago. Finally, taking a holistic view of police contact in Chicago and Philadelphia, we show that settlement agreements curbed pedestrian stops but that a concomitant rise in traffic stops maintained aggregate racial disparities, illustrating the challenges facing regulatory efforts. These case studies highlight the promise and value of viewing legal principles and policy goals through the lens of modern data analysis—both in police reform and in reform efforts more broadly.

The University of Chicago Law Review [89:2: Pages 441-475 March 2022  

By Beth A. Colgan

Highly publicized killings of people by law enforcement during traffic stops have led to a growing interest in traffic enforcement reform. While some see automated traffic enforcement and unarmed civilian units as a way to decrease interactions with law enforcement in hopes of decreasing police killings, it fails to address traditional traffic enforcement’s budgetary and racial problems. This article argues that this shift may lead to more enforcement of other codes that can create opportunities for violence and revenue extraction in overpoliced communities of color. The article concludes with a urging for more expansive and systemic changes to account for the revenue-generating economy of traffic enforcement.    

Key Findings: 

• Nonpayment of economic sanctions stemming from traffic tickets may trigger arrest warrants, vehicle impoundment, or a suspended driver’s license, which may carry additional costs.

• Law enforcement uses traffic codes as a weapon to implement pretextual stops to make traffic-based forfeitures.

• Research suggests revenue generation may push law enforcement officers away from investigating violent and property offenses and toward traffic enforcement and drug interdiction.

• Studies suggest law enforcement’s ability to retain forfeiture revenue has helped motivate the war on drugs.

Recommendations: 

• Afford a statutory right to counsel in cases involving fines and forfeitures.

• Require a criminal conviction before forfeiture in nearly all cases.

• Eliminate the federal Equitable Sharing program or pass laws that prohibit participation in the program.

• Reduce law enforcement dependency on fines, fees, and forfeiture revenue by redirecting them elsewhere

North Carolina Law Review, Vol. 100, 889-958 (2023)

By Mike McLively and Brittany Nieto

Oakland, considered for many years to be among the most dangerous cities in America, has cut its annual shootings and homicides nearly in half since 2012. Now, city leaders and activists from around the country are traveling to Oakland to learn from this remarkable success. Oakland gives us reason to hope that reducing gun violence in our most impacted communities is possible, and a basic framework for how to get there. In 2012, after several failures and facing great pressure from community activists, Oakland city leaders committed to launching a citywide violence reduction strategy, known as Oakland Ceasefire, with the help of technical experts from the California Partnership for Safe Communities (CPSC). Oakland Ceasefire is an ongoing partnership between community members, social service providers, and law enforcement officials, who work together to reduce violence, build police-community trust, and improve outcomes for high-risk individuals. The strategy has five main components: Analysis of violent incidents and trends, referred to as a problem analysis, to identify individuals at the highest risk of participating in serious violence. Oakland’s problem analysis revealed several misconceptions about the city’s violence dynamics. It also showed that only 400 individuals—just 0.1% of Oakland’s total population—were at the highest risk for engaging in serious violence at any given time. Oakland Ceasefire partners intervene with this population. Respectful, in-person communications with high-risk individuals to warn about the risks of ongoing violence and provide a genuine offer of assistance. With Oakland Ceasefire, these communications primarily take the form of call-ins, interventions in which stakeholders communicate with small groups of those most at risk of serious violence, and custom notifications, a personalized method of heading off imminent violence. Relationship-based social services are provided to high-risk individuals through the Oakland Unite network of community-based organizations. Oakland Unite is a unique city agency that uses taxpayer money to fund organizations that provide services like intensive mentoring, economic and educational training, and direct assistance to victims of violence and their families. Narrowly focused law enforcement actions by the Oakland Police Department’s (OPD) Ceasefire Section, in addition to ongoing, department-wide training in the principles of procedural justice and other strategies to improve police-community relationships. Since reforming its approach to violence, OPD has seen a dramatic increase in its homicide solve rate, while use-of-force incidents and complaints against the department are on the decline. An intentional management structure built around regular communication between Oakland Ceasefire partners and city leaders to stay on top of changing violence dynamics and track progress toward yearly violence reduction goals. Regular meetings include weekly shooting reviews, bimonthly coordination meetings, and performance reviews led by Oakland’s mayor.     

Giffords Law Center, Faith in Action, and the Black and Brown Gun Violence Prevention Consortium, 2019. 107p/  

By Aline Ara Santos Carvalho , Táhcita Medrado Mizael , Angelo A S Sampaio

A police stop must be based on founded suspicion: an officer's ability to correctly discriminate suspicious behavior. However, police stops can be influenced by negative attitudes toward Black individuals. We conducted a systematic review of empirical articles published from 2014 to 2019 that investigated the relationship between racial prejudice and police stops on PsycInfo using keywords such as "race," "ethnic," "police stop," "traffic stop," and "stop and frisk." Results included 16 studies conducted in the United States, England, Wales, and the Netherlands and showed that Black men were the most frequent targets of police stops; that many individuals who have been stopped by the police reported negative perceptions of the police force; that the Stop, Question, and Frisk strategy used by some U.S. police departments proved to be a type of stop that favors racial selectivity; and that traffic stops were favorable environments for racially biased actions by officers. We conclude that institutional racism in police stops proves to be a problem shared by several countries, including Brazil. We suggest more investigations to characterize institutional racism in the police force and in other settings and interventions aimed at reducing individual biases and collective racist practices.

Behav Anal Pract. 2021 May 28;15(4):1213-1220. doi: 10.1007/s40617-021-00578-4. PMID: 36605162; PMCID: PMC9744975

By Hildy Saizow., et al. ., CNA

In May 2020, the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer shocked the nation. Recorded footage brought the image of his death to millions of people, and they responded as never before. As the summer unfolded, protests were organized in communities all across the nation, with people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, young and old alike, marching together asking for
police reform and sharing concerns over police brutality and systemic racism. In response, police reform proposals were introduced at the federal and state levels, with more than 30 states considering legislative changes on police practices and accountability. At the local level, government and police officials began proposing changes to police policy and practice, enacting bans on chokeholds, and promoting de-escalation training. In the City of Antioch, hundreds of concerned community members voiced their opinions on race relations and policing reform during three City Council meetings in June 2020. The issues they raised were wide ranging, including systemic racism, body-worn cameras, and police recruitment, training, and accountability. In response, the Antioch City Council decided to hold a series of roundtable
discussions called Bridging the Gap to hear the perspectives of additional community members and learn more about the kinds of changes in policing the community desired. The City wanted to better understand the community’s perspectives on racial injustice and police-community relations and to identify ways to address them. CNA, an independent national research and analysis firm, was hired
to organize and facilitate these roundtable discussions. Major incidents involving police can and have happened all around the country. As we were writing this report, we learned that they can happen in Antioch, too. During our initial conversations to understand the goals of the Bridging the Gap sessions, we often heard that Antioch was holding community dialogues because of things that happened in other places. Recently, an interaction between a young man and Antioch police officers ended in the death of the young man. Although it may be too soon to determine the circumstances that lead to his death, the timing of this incident should serve as a cautionary tale for other departments. The policing issues in Antioch are national, and the national issues matter in Antioch.

Process:

CNA, through its Center for Justice Research and Innovation, began planning the roundtable discussions in November 2020. As a nationally recognized leader in justice systems research, police-community relations, and police reform efforts, CNA brought significant technical skills and a deep understanding of community policing, the intersection of race and policing, and evidence-based policing to the project. For over a decade, CNA has worked with more than 400 police departments to assess their operations, recommend changes based on best practices, and provide the technical assistance needed to implement change.

Arlington, VA: CNA, 2021. 60p.