The Dream Revisited

Policing and Segregation

by Jeffrey A. Fagan | July 2017

The “new policing” has been widely adopted both in the U.S. and internationally for over two decades, following a pattern common to the diffusion of innovation [1]. The regime combines advanced analytics to pinpoint allocations of officers, new forms of strict management accountability, and aggressive tactical enforcement of public order crimes or violations. That last prong, the policing “model,” varies from place to place, but generally includes high rates of investigative stops both of pedestrians and vehicles, arrests for minor misdemeanors, and summons for violations of civil ordinances such as open containers of alcohol or high weeds. Most stops result in no action: no one is arrested or issued a summons, and rarely do the police find weapons or other contraband [2]. The interactions can be noxious if not violent, and the petty and not-so-petty indignities and perceived injustices of these stops can produce a strong sense of legal cynicism, and in turn, withdrawal of cooperation with police [3].

If arrested, some face a night in jail awaiting a court appearance, others spend longer times in jail if they cannot make bail. Others face repeated court dates to resolve their cases, costing them lost days of work. Once in court, the menu of fines and fees ranges from detention fees to filing fees to drug testing fees to electronic monitoring fees that challenge their ability to pay [4]. Many plead guilty simply to escape those intrusions and obligations. Arrest warrants are issued to those who fail to appear for court dates or who are unable to pay fines, transforming what might have been a non-criminal violation into a criminal matter [5]. The stigma costs of a misdemeanor conviction can lead to problems with housing, jury service, employment, and schooling. On top of these burdens, research on the “new policing” leaves some doubt as to its contributions to public safety and urban life [6].

Also, the effects of the new policing are highly racialized: relative to crime rates, whether at the tract or precinct or neighborhood level, the rate of stops of Black and Latino people are higher than the local crime or social conditions would predict [7]. The same is true for misdemeanor arrests [8]. So, when court cases result in monetary fines or fees, the burden falls disproportionately on non-Whites [9]. These fees amount to a racial latent tax that reaches into the pockets of mostly poor and predominantly minority citizens, deepening any pre-existing impoverishment [10] while aggravating racial disparities in criminal justice [11].

The combination of criminal sanctions and mounting fees tends to reinforce both social and spatial boundaries, and in turn deepen racial and economic concentrations in “poverty traps.”[12] In effect, the new policing reinforces segregation by imposing a criminal justice tax on everyday movements and activities. In places as disparate as Ferguson and the South Bronx, the threat of police contacts or criminal sanctions, with both monetary costs and the threat of jailing, raises the transaction costs for Black and Latino persons to move freely within their neighborhoods and as well as when they cross racial boundaries. Since police deployments and actions are racialized and focused in poor and segregated places, police reproduce inequality, racial stratification, and segregation through criminal legal enforcement actions that constrain mobility [13]. In other words, when police routinely intervene in the everyday lives of citizens, they impose interaction costs that deter residents from moving freely.

When police actions produce legal and economic consequences for those already in disadvantaged social positions, those consequences effectively lock them in already disadvantaged places [14]. Stops and arrests also create the risk of heightened police surveillance and then harsher treatment in the courts for any subsequent appearance [15], and also spill over to bias in the form of exclusions from serving on juries [16] or college enrollment, attendance and achievement [17]. Neighborhoods stigmatized by crime and arrests are unattractive for investment, where economic segregation coincides with residential segregation [18]. Limited access to capital further attenuates the ability of minority business borrowers to invest and multiply their capital, cutting off opportunities for local economic development to the point where it becomes endemic to the neighborhood [19]. Both the stigma and monetary costs of legal interventions and the dignity costs of police intrusions help to enforce racial boundaries. In other words, stops and arrests will beget stops and arrests and “spillover discrimination,” simply by stigmatizing a neighborhood as a “high crime area.” [20]

The conflation of racial segregation and economic mobility means that, typically, a black adolescent or young adult male in U.S. cities lives in very different economic and social circumstances than his white counterpart: different types of schools, different social networks, different levels of access to social capital leading to crime, and different exposure to the police and a “high risk of physical injury, violent death, and criminal victimization.” [21] People in places with high levels of racial fragmentation and income inequality have less access to public goods, and lower levels of civic engagement that might alleviate those conditions [22]. Residents of predominantly minority and low-income neighborhoods have limited access to the types of everyday material services (such as, libraries, supermarkets, parks, and cultural institutions) that characterize economically better-off places [23]. Several studies report that racial segregation exacerbates the prevalence and severity of health disparities [24], and is a fundamental cause of racial disparities in health [25]. Although research on stressors has not looked (yet) at police treatment, some studies have shown the psychological impacts on mental health of harsh interactions with police in the context of new policing [26].

Research to make these connections is still new, but both theory and data are available to test and elaborate these dynamics. In addition to these indicia of disadvantage, new studies are underway to examine whether policing influences rates of bankruptcy, foreclosure, inequality and downward mobility. The good news here is that in many places, crime rates remain relatively low compared to earlier decades. The bad news, then, is that policing has become further disconnected from crime, or from judging guilt and innocence, and more closely tied to the racial composition and economic position of neighborhoods. That is indeed bad news.

 

Notes

[1] Philip B. Heymann, The New Policing, 28 Fordham Urb. L.J. 407 (2000).

[2] Sharad Goel, Justin M. Rao & Ravi Shroff, Precinct or Prejudice? Understanding Racial Disparities in New York City's Stop-and-Frisk Policy, 10 Annals Applied Stat. 365, 387 (2016).  Tracey L. Meares, Programming Errors: Understanding the constitutionality of stop-and-frisk as a program, not an incident, 82 University of Chicago Law Review 159-179 (2015). Jeffrey Fagan, Greg Conyers, and Ian Ayres, No Runs, Few Hits, and Many Errors: Street Stops and Racial Bias in Proactive Policing, Columbia Law School, Working Paper (2015). 

[3] Monica C. Bell, Police Reform & the Dismantling of Legal Cynicism, 126 Yale Law Journal (2017, forthcoming).  Robert J. Sampson and Dawn J. Bartusch, Legal cynicism and (subcultural?) tolerance of deviance: The neighborhood context of racial difference, 32 Law & Society Review 777 (1998). Matthew Desmond, Andrew V. Papachristos, and David S. Kirk, Police violence and citizen crime reporting in the black community, 81 American Sociological Review 857 (2016). David S. Kirk and Mari Matsuda, Legal cynicism, collective efficacy, and the ecology of arrest, 49 Criminology 443 (2011).

[4] Alexes Harris, A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as a Punishment for the Poor 26–46 (2016).  Wayne A. Logan & Ronald F. Wright, Mercenary Criminal Justice, 2014 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1175, 1186–1189 (2014). Katherine Beckett & Alexes Harris, On Cash and Conviction: Monetary Sanctions as Misguided Policy, 10 Criminology & Pub. Pol’y 509 (2011). Katherine Baiker & Mireille Jacobson, Finders Keepers: Forfeiture Laws, Policing Incentives, and Local Budgets, 91 J. Pub. Econ. 2113 (2007).

[5] Jeffrey Fagan and Elliott Ash, New Policing, New Segregation, 106 Georgetown Law Journal (forthcoming, 2017).

[6] John MacDonald, Jeffrey Fagan & Amanda Geller, The Effects of Local Police Surges on Crime and Arrests in New York City, 11 PLoS ONE e0157223, 10–11 (2016); Jeffrey Fagan, Terry’s Original Sin, 2016 U. Chi. Legal F. 101 (2016). David Weisburd et al., Do Stop, Question and Frisk Practices Deter Crime?  Evidence at Microunits of Space and Time, 15 Criminology and Public Policy 31 (2016). Richard Rosenfeld & Robert Fornango, The Impact of Police Stops on Precinct Robbery and Burglary Rates in New York City, 2003-2010, 31 Just. Q. 96 (2012).  Hope Corman & Naci Mocan, Carrots, Sticks, and Broken Windows, 48 J.L. & Econ. 235 (2005).  Charis Kubrin, et al., Proactive Policing and Robbery Rates across U.S. Cities, 48 Criminology 57 (2010). Richard Rosenfeld & Robert Fornango, The Impact of Police Stops on Precinct Robbery and Burglary Rates in New York City, 2003-2010, 31 Just. Q. 96 (2012).  Hope Corman & Naci Mocan, Carrots, Sticks, and Broken Windows, 48 J.L. & Econ. 235 (2005).  Charis Kubrin, et al., Proactive Policing and Robbery Rates across U.S. Cities, 48 Criminology 57 (2010). Jeffrey Fagan and Elliott Ash, New Policing, New Segregation, 106 Georgetown Law Journal (forthcoming, 2017)

[7] Jeffrey Fagan & Garth Davies, Street Stops and Broken Windows: Terry, Race, and Disorder in New York City, 28 Fordham Urb. L.J. 457, 462 (2000); Andrew Gelman, Jeffrey Fagan & Alex Kiss, The Analysis of the New York City Police Department’s “Stop-and-Frisk” Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias, 479 J. Am. Stat. Ass’n 813, 821 (2007); Jeffrey A. Fagan et al., Street Stops and Broken Windows Revisited: The Demography and Logic of Proactive Policing in a Safe and Changing City, in Race, Ethnicity, and Policing 309, 309–10 (Stephen K. Rice & Michael D. White eds., 2010). Jeffrey Fagan, Anthony A. Braga, Rod K. Brunson & April Pattavina, Stops and Stares: Street Stops, Surveillance and Race in the New Policing, Fordham Urb. L.J. (forthcoming 2017).

[8] Tammy Rinehart Kochel, David B. Wilson & Stephen D. Mastrofski, Effect of Suspect Race on Officers’ Arrest Decisions, 49 Criminology 473, 490-91 (2011).  Kohler-Hausmann, supra n.5.

[9] Alexes Harris, A Pound of Flesh: Monetary Sanctions as a Punishment for the Poor 26–46 (2016).  Wayne A. Logan & Ronald F. Wright, Mercenary Criminal Justice, 2014 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1175, 1186–1189 (2014). Katherine Beckett & Alexes Harris, On Cash and Conviction: Monetary Sanctions as Misguided Policy, 10 Criminology & Pub. Pol’y 509 (2011). Katherine Baiker & Mireille Jacobson, Finders Keepers: Forfeiture Laws, Policing Incentives, and Local Budgets, 91 J. Pub. Econ. 2113 (2007).

[10] American Civil Liberties Union, In for a Penny: The Rise of America’s New Debtors’ Prisons (2010), https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/InForAPenny_web.pdf.  Katherine Beckett & Alexes Harris, On Cash and Conviction: Monetary Sanctions as Misguided Policy, 10 Criminology & Pub. Pol’y 509 (2011).

[11] Amy E. Lerman and Vesla M. Weaver, Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control. University of Chicago Press, 2014.

[12] Robert J. Sampson & Jeffrey D. Morenoff, Durable Inequality: Spatial Dynamics, Social Processes, and the Persistence of Poverty in Chicago Neighborhoods, in Poverty Traps 176 (Samuel Bowles et al. eds., 2006).

[13] Aziz Z. Huq, The Consequences of Disparate Policing: Evaluating Stop-and Frisk as a Modality of Urban Policing, 100 Minn. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2017)

[14] Robert J. Sampson & Patrick Sharkey, Neighborhood Selection and the Social Reproduction of Concentrated Inequality, 45 Demography 1, tbl.4 (2008)

[15] Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu & Lauren Kirchner, Machine Bias, ProPublica (May 23, 2016), https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-​in-criminal-sentencing/

[16] Vida B. Johnson, Arresting Batson: How Striking Jurors Based on Arrest Records Violates Batson, 34 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. 387 (2016)

[17] Alex O. Widdowson, Sonja E. Siennick & Carter Hay, The Implications of Arrest for College Enrollment: An Analysis of Long-Term Effects and Mediating Mechanisms, 54 Criminology 621 (2016)

[18] Paul A. Jargowsky, Take The Money and Run: Economic Segregation in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 61 Amer. Soc. Review 984-008 (1996).  Jerome L. Kaufman, Chicago: Segregation and the New Urban Poverty, in Urban Segregation and the Welfare State: Inequality and Exclusion in Western Cities (S. Musterd & W. Ostendorf, eds.) 45 (2000). Chad R. Farrell, Bifurcation, Fragmentation or Segregation? The Racial and Geographical Structure of US Metropolitan Segregation 1990–2000, 45 Urb. Stud. 467(2008)

[19] Darius Palia, Differential Access to Capital from Financial Institutions by Minority Entrepreneurs, 13 J. Emp. Leg. Studies 756  (2016).

[20] Andrew Ferguson and Damien Bernache, The High-Crime Area Question: Requiring Verifiable and Quantifiable Evidence for Fourth Amendment Reasonable Suspicion Analysis. 57 American University Law Review 1587-1644 (2008).

[21] Douglas A. Massey, Getting Away with Murder: Segregation and Violent Crime in Urban America, 143 U. Penn. L. Rev. 1203, 1210 (1995) (describing the mechanisms by which segregation creates conditions leading to elevated risks of violent crime victimization).

[22] Alberto Alesina, Reza Baqir & William Easterly, Public Goods and Ethnic Divisions, 114 Q. J. Econ. 1243, 1274 (1999) (showing evidence that ethnic fragmentation with neighborhood segregation can lead to a low supply of public goods, including public education); see also Andrea Tesei, Racial Fragmentation, Income Inequality and Social Capital Formation: New Evidence from the U.S. 2 (2011) (unpublished paper), http://www.ub.edu/​economiaempresa/​jobmarket/recruitment/tesei.pdf.

[23] John R. Logan, Separate and Unequal: The Neighborhood Gap for Blacks, Hispanics and Asians in Metropolitan America 1, 4, 9 (2011), http://216.243.142.37/​resourcefiles/SeperateUnequalBrownUniversity.pdf.

[24] Tse-Chuan Yang, Yunhan Zhao & Qian Song, Residential Segregation and Racial Disparities in Self-Rated Health: How Do Dimensions of Residential Segregation Matter?,  61 Soc. Sci. Res. 29 (2017).

[25] David R. Williams & Chiquita Collins, Racial Residential Segregation: A Fundamental Cause of Racial Disparities in Health, 116 Pub. Health Rep. 404, 407 (2001).

[26] Amanda Geller et al., supra n.3.  Abigail A. Sewell, Kevin A. Jefferson, & H. Lee, Living under surveillance: Gender, psychological distress, and stop- question-and-frisk policing in New York City, 159 Social Science and Medicine, 1-13 (2016).  Abigail A. Sewell and Kevin A. Jefferson, Collateral damage: The health effects of invasive police encounters in New York City, 93 Journal of Urban Health 42-67 (2016). 

Jeffrey A. Fagan is an Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. 

More in Discussion 24: Policing and Segregation