Police stops themselves increase later delinquency, counterproductively raising crime

Evidence

There is consistent evidence of racial disparities in policing, including in stops, searches, handcuffing, arrests, the words spoken during the interaction, the justification and reasons for the stop, and the use of force. In addition to these discrete behaviors, the role of race in police decision-making can have an impact that lasts beyond the duration of a specific interaction. It also can have effects beyond the specific individuals involved in a police encounter. For example, even controlling for demographics and measures of criminality, contact with the CJS reduces one’s likelihood of voting (Weaver & Lerman, 2010), illustrating that encounters with the system can shape a person’s civic involvement and sense of citizenship. This was the case even for a minor encounter with police that did not end in an arrest. Contact with the police can also set into motion a process that can change a person’s life trajectory. Research by Del Toro and colleagues (2019) shows that being stopped by police predicts additional criminal behavior six to eighteen months later among Black and Latino male youth, even independent of prior delinquency. This was especially true among younger youth: the younger the boy was when he was first stopped by police, the larger the increase in delinquent behavior six months later. This relationship was partially driven by psychological distress, illustrating that the interactions police have with the community, and particularly with those who are marginalized and vulnerable, can have long-lasting effects on people’s life trajectories, even when those contacts do not result in an arrest. Moreover, these types of effects are counterproductive, cutting against law enforcement’s own objective to lower crime. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 380

Categorization

• SEED: The finding that police stops directly increase future delinquency among youth is a strong hook for an essay on how punitive institutions manufacture the very problems they claim to solve.
• XREF: connects to: A police work stoppage let mass street crime unfold unchecked — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 366