AbstractWhat effect does black politics in the United States have on the attitudes of black citizens in other national contexts? Literature on the black diaspora and transnationalism has characterized cultural and political linkages between black communities in North America, the Caribbean, and Europe, especially during the mid-20th century. In this article, I exploit random timing in the administration of a public attitudes survey to demonstrate that such linkages persist and that the police killing of Eric Garner in 2014 negatively affected black Londoners' attitudes toward the Metropolitan Police. Notably, I find the effect was largely concentrated among black Londoners: estimates of an effect on white and South Asian Londoners were small and largely insignificant. The evidence presented here demonstrates that racial violence in the United States can affect racial politics in other national contexts and helps frame the emergence of Black Lives Matter chapters and protests beyond the United States.
AbstractExtant scholarship on black politics has demonstrated the mobilizing effect that racial group consciousness can have on African American political participation. Few studies, however, test for or compare the political impact of group consciousness across national contexts. This paper presents an empirical comparison of group consciousness and its relationship with political behavior among black Americans and black Britons. Mobilizing two nationally representative surveys from the United States and Britain and a multi-dimensional measure of group consciousness, the findings presented here suggest that while elements of racial group consciousness are present among blacks in both societies, racial group consciousness is generally more prevalent and politically significant among blacks in the United States. For example, blacks in Britain are less likely to view blacks as occupying a fundamentally marginalized structural position and less likely to endorse race specific interventions that might address that marginalization. Results from regression analysis further suggest that while strong racial (rather than national) group attachment negatively affects the likelihood that blacks will vote in both countries, other elements of group consciousness are more strongly associated with participation among blacks in the United States than in Britain.
This dissertation explores the causes and consequences of contemporary policing practices, focusing particular attention on the high volume, aggressive, and racially discriminatory policing strategies that police departments throughout the United States began to adopt in the 1970s and 1980s. In a series of empirical analyses, it makes three principle claims. First, this dissertation argues that the adoption of these punitive policing practices can be attributed in no small part to municipal strategies of gentrification and revitalization. In doing so, it advances research on the post-industrial policing hypothesis, which argues that as cities pursue growth strategies designed to appeal to members of the so-called "creative classes'' or businesses in the post-industrial sector, they will increasingly adopt punitive policing practices to harass, displace, or control groups (including racial and ethnic minorities) that are deemed incompatible with these strategies. Mobilizing data on order maintenance policing (OMP) in New York City and the Stop, Question, and Frisk (SQF) police stops that OMP generated, this dissertation finds that gentrification in New York City is associated with significantly higher rates of SQF police stops, mostly in neighborhoods that lie adjacent to or near gentrifying tracts. In a second analysis, this dissertation argues that these aggressive policing strategies have the potential to impact political behavior, and explores how OMP practices in New York City affected voter turnout and candidate choice in that city. In a series of national and local elections, it finds that while concentrated policing can negatively affect political participation in the form of voter turnout, heavily policed communities can and do mobilize to counteract these harmful and discriminatory policing policies. Specifically, it finds that while SQF policing was associated with lower rates of turnout in the 2010 and 2006 national elections, it was also associated with higher rates of turnout in the 2008 national election and the 2013 mayoral election and Democratic primary. While the positive association between turnout and policing in the 2008 national election was likely do to the unique mobilizing affect that Barack Obama's campaign had on marginalized communities, this dissertation argues that the higher rates of turnout in the 2013 general and Democratic primary are attributable to the mobilization of communities in New York City to end SQF policing. In support of this claim, this chapter presents additional evidence that higher rates of SQF policing was associated with more support for the Democratic primary candidate (John Liu) who promised to end SQF policing and significantly less support for the candidate (William Thompson) who promised to keep it. In its third and final analysis, this dissertation explores the extent to which aggressive and discriminatory policing affects political behavior in other national contexts, specifically the United Kingdom. Characterizing contemporary policing practices in Britain which: 1) were adopted specifically following their successful implementation in American cities such as New York City and 2) which exhibit similar levels of racial and ethnic disparity, this chapter argues that like gentrification, post-industrial policing and its political consequences are global in scope. Mobilizing data from police stops of citizens in Greater London, Manchester, and the West-Midlands this analysis similarly finds that as the intensity of police-citizen contact increases, political participation decreases. Unlike in New York City, however, this analysis does not uncover instances or contexts where higher levels of policing were associated with higher rates of turnout, which it tentatively attributes to differences in political opportunity structure in the two contexts.
This article presents an empirical analysis of the postindustrial policing hypothesis, which argues that as cities pursue growth strategies designed to appeal to members of the so-called "creative classes," they increasingly adopt punitive policing strategies, such as order maintenance policing. While several studies offer some evidence for the hypothesis, no study has yet tested the most direct spatial implication of this hypothesis within cities: that areas of a city undergoing gentrification or revitalization will evince higher levels of postindustrial policing. In a series of spatial Durbin models that utilize newly available data sets from New York City, this article demonstrates a strong positive association between gentrification and postindustrial policing. The article also finds that citizen demand for postindustrial policing is only weakly associated with its spatial distribution. These results and their potential implications are discussed in the conclusion.
In Canada, all federally incarcerated individuals are required to complete a number of actuarial risk assessments upon entering prison which influence the security level in which they are housed, opportunities to participate in rehabilitative services while incarcerated, and prospects for parole. While proponents of actuarial risk assessments—which make algorithmic decisions based on objective inputs—argue that such tools can reduce the influence of racial and gender bias in carceral decision making, others argue that they may perpetuate or exacerbate racial and gender inequality. The extent to which racial and gender disparities exist in the outcomes of the actuarial risk assessments used in federal Canadian prisons is largely unknown. Using newly available data, we characterize racial and gender disparities in the outcomes of actuarial risk assessments used in Canadian prisons and their relationship to outcomes. We find significant racial differences in risk assessment scores that leave Black and Indigenous Canadians worse off than their white counterparts, important differences for all racial groups in the treatment of women, and evidence suggestive of racial bias in parole and housing decisions.
Research on local welfare spending for individuals and families experiencing homelessness has characterized such spending as severely limited and constrained. Studies on fiscal federalism have argued that competition between local governments prevents leaders from spending much, if anything, to assist the homeless. County governments may be further constrained from providing assistance by state constitutions or statutes. Finally, local businesses may organize and lobby for punitive, rather than ameliorative, local treatment of the homeless. In this study, we argue that ordinary voters matter for local spending for the homeless, particularly in states where they are empowered to affect local government spending through ballot propositions. Accordingly, we mobilize data from a ballot initiative in Los Angeles County and present an exploratory study of the determinants of voter support for homelessness relief. We find that range of factors, particularly partisanship and contact with the homeless, strongly predict support for spending on the homeless.
AbstractResearch on race and policing increasingly draws upon data collected by police officers to estimate racial disparities in police contact. Many of these data sets, however, rely on officer perception of a stopped person's race, which may be inconsistent with how those individuals self‐identify. Furthermore, researchers frequently benchmark contact data where race is perceived by police officers against census and survey data where race is self‐identified. We argue that discordance between how individuals self‐identify and how they are classified by officers can bias estimates of racial disparities. Using a unique data set, which allows us to compare officers' racial classification of stopped persons with those same persons' racial self‐identification, we characterize rates of racial misclassification in administrative police records. We find evidence of racial misclassification in police records, especially among Hispanic and Asians/Pacific Islanders. We find that officer classification of Hispanics as (non‐Hispanic) White is the most common form of racial misclassification in our sample and that its substantive consequences are significant. Specifically, we find that officer classification of Hispanics as White may lead analysts to incorrectly conclude that Hispanics are no more likely than Whites to be cited by police.
