Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM Broken Windows The police and neighborhood safety GEORGE L. KELLING AND JAMES Q. WILSON Like ​The Atlantic? Subscribe to ​The Atlantic Daily​, our free weekday email newsletter. | MARCH 1982 ISSUE Email | U.S. SIGN UP In the mid-1970s The State of New Jersey announced a "Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Program," designed to improve the quality of community life in twenty-eight cities. As part of that program, the state provided money to help cities take police officers out of their patrol cars and assign them to walking beats. The governor and other state officials were enthusiastic about using foot patrol as a way of cutting crime, but many police chiefs were skeptical. Foot patrol, in their eyes, had been pretty much discredited. It reduced the mobility of the police, who thus had difficulty responding to citizen calls for service, and it weakened headquarters control over patrol officers. Many police officers also disliked foot patrol, but for different reasons: it was hard work, it kept them outside on cold, rainy nights, and it reduced their chances for making a "good pinch." In some departments, assigning officers to foot patrol had been used as a form of punishment. And academic experts on policing doubted that foot patrol would have any impact on crime rates; it was, in the opinion of most, little more than a sop to public opinion. But since the state https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 1 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM was paying for it, the local authorities were willing to go along. Five years after the program started, the Police Foundation, in Washington, D.C., published an evaluation of the foot-patrol project. Based on its analysis of a carefully controlled experiment carried out chiefly in Newark, the foundation concluded, to the surprise of hardly anyone, that foot patrol had not reduced crime rates. But residents of the foot patrolled neighborhoods seemed to feel more secure than persons in other areas, tended to believe that crime had been reduced, and seemed to take fewer steps to protect themselves from crime (staying at home with the doors locked, for example). Moreover, citizens in the foot-patrol areas had a more favorable opinion of the police than did those living elsewhere. And officers walking beats had higher morale, greater job satisfaction, and a more favorable attitude toward citizens in their neighborhoods than did officers assigned to patrol cars. These findings may be taken as evidence that the skeptics were right- foot patrol has no effect on crime; it merely fools the citizens into thinking that they are safer. But in our view, and in the view of the authors of the Police Foundation study (of whom Kelling was one), the citizens of Newark were not fooled at all. They knew what the foot-patrol officers were doing, they knew it was different from what motorized officers do, and they knew that having officers walk beats did in fact make their neighborhoods safer. But how can a neighborhood be "safer" when the crime rate has not gone down— in fact, may have gone up? Finding the answer requires first that we understand what most often frightens people in public places. Many citizens, of course, are primarily frightened by crime, especially crime involving a sudden, violent attack by a stranger. This risk is very real, in Newark as in many large cities. But we tend to overlook another source of fear—the fear of being bothered by https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 2 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM disorderly people. Not violent people, nor, necessarily, criminals, but disreputable or obstreperous or unpredictable people: panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers, prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally disturbed. What foot-patrol officers did was to elevate, to the extent they could, the level of public order in these neighborhoods. Though the neighborhoods were predominantly black and the foot patrolmen were mostly white, this "ordermaintenance" function of the police was performed to the general satisfaction of both parties. One of us (Kelling) spent many hours walking with Newark foot-patrol officers to see how they defined "order" and what they did to maintain it. One beat was typical: a busy but dilapidated area in the heart of Newark, with many abandoned buildings, marginal shops (several of which prominently displayed knives and straight-edged razors in their windows), one large department store, and, most important, a train station and several major bus stops. Though the area was run-down, its streets were filled with people, because it was a major transportation center. The good order of this area was important not only to those who lived and worked there but also to many others, who had to move through it on their way home, to supermarkets, or to factories. The people on the street were primarily black; the officer who walked the street was white. The people were made up of "regulars" and "strangers." Regulars included both "decent folk" and some drunks and derelicts who were always there but who "knew their place." Strangers were, well, strangers, and viewed suspiciously, sometimes apprehensively. The officer—call him Kelly—knew who the regulars were, and they knew him. As he saw his job, he was to keep an eye on strangers, and make certain that the disreputable regulars observed some informal but widely understood rules. Drunks and addicts could sit on the https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 3 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM stoops, but could not lie down. People could drink on side streets, but not at the main intersection. Bottles had to be in paper bags. Talking to, bothering, or begging from people waiting at the bus stop was strictly forbidden. If a dispute erupted between a businessman and a customer, the businessman was assumed to be right, especially if the customer was a stranger. If a stranger loitered, Kelly would ask him if he had any means of support and what his business was; if he gave unsatisfactory answers, he was sent on his way. Persons who broke the informal rules, especially those who bothered people waiting at bus stops, were arrested for vagrancy. Noisy teenagers were told to keep quiet. These rules were defined and enforced in collaboration with the "regulars" on the street. Another neighborhood might have different rules, but these, everybody understood, were the rules for this neighborhood. If someone violated them, the regulars not only turned to Kelly for help but also ridiculed the violator. Sometimes what Kelly did could be described as "enforcing the law," but just as often it involved taking informal or extralegal steps to help protect what the neighborhood had decided was the appropriate level of public order. Some of the things he did probably would not withstand a legal challenge. A determined skeptic might acknowledge that a skilled foot-patrol officer can maintain order but still insist that this sort of "order" has little to do with the real sources of community fear—that is, with violent crime. To a degree, that is true. But two things must be borne in mind. First, outside observers should not assume that they know how much of the anxiety now endemic in many big-city neighborhoods stems from a fear of "real" crime and how much from a sense that the street is disorderly, a source of distasteful, worrisome encounters. The people of Newark, to judge from their behavior and their remarks to interviewers, apparently assign a high value to public order, and feel relieved and reassured when the police help them maintain that order. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 4 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM Second, at the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined windowbreakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. (It has always been fun.) Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist, reported in 1969 on some experiments testing the broken-window theory. He arranged to have an automobile without license plates parked with its hood up on a street in the Bronx and a comparable automobile on a street in Palo Alto, California. The car in the Bronx was attacked by "vandals" within ten minutes of its "abandonment." The first to arrive were a family—father, mother, and young son —who removed the radiator and battery. Within twenty-four hours, virtually everything of value had been removed. Then random destruction began— windows were smashed, parts torn off, upholstery ripped. Children began to use the car as a playground. Most of the adult "vandals" were well-dressed, apparently clean-cut whites. The car in Palo Alto sat untouched for more than a week. Then Zimbardo smashed part of it with a sledgehammer. Soon, passersby were joining in. Within a few hours, the car had been turned upside down and utterly destroyed. Again, the "vandals" appeared to be primarily respectable whites. Untended property becomes fair game for people out for fun or plunder and even for people who ordinarily would not dream of doing such things and who probably consider themselves law-abiding. Because of the nature of community https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 5 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM life in the Bronx—its anonymity, the frequency with which cars are abandoned and things are stolen or broken, the past experience of "no one caring"— vandalism begins much more quickly than it does in staid Palo Alto, where people have come to believe that private possessions are cared for, and that mischievous behavior is costly. But vandalism can occur anywhere once communal barriers—the sense of mutual regard and the obligations of civility— are lowered by actions that seem to signal that "no one cares." We suggest that "untended" behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls. A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other's children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle. A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers. At this point it is not inevitable that serious crime will flourish or violent attacks on strangers will occur. But many residents will think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and they will modify their behavior accordingly. They will use the streets less often, and when on the streets will stay apart from their fellows, moving with averted eyes, silent lips, and hurried steps. "Don't get involved." For some residents, this growing atomization will matter little, because the neighborhood is not their "home" but "the place where they live." Their interests are elsewhere; they are cosmopolitans. But it will matter greatly to other people, whose lives derive meaning and satisfaction from local https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 6 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM attachments rather than worldly involvement; for them, the neighborhood will cease to exist except for a few reliable friends whom they arrange to meet. Such an area is vulnerable to criminal invasion. Though it is not inevitable, it is more likely that here, rather than in places where people are confident they can regulate public behavior by informal controls, drugs will change hands, prostitutes will solicit, and cars will be stripped. That the drunks will be robbed by boys who do it as a lark, and the prostitutes' customers will be robbed by men who do it purposefully and perhaps violently. That muggings will occur. Among those who often find it difficult to move away from this are the elderly. Surveys of citizens suggest that the elderly are much less likely to be the victims of crime than younger persons, and some have inferred from this that the wellknown fear of crime voiced by the elderly is an exaggeration: perhaps we ought not to design special programs to protect older persons; perhaps we should even try to talk them out of their mistaken fears. This argument misses the point. The prospect of a confrontation with an obstreperous teenager or a drunken panhandler can be as fear-inducing for defenseless persons as the prospect of meeting an actual robber; indeed, to a defenseless person, the two kinds of confrontation are often indistinguishable. Moreover, the lower rate at which the elderly are victimized is a measure of the steps they have already taken—chiefly, staying behind locked doors—to minimize the risks they face. Young men are more frequently attacked than older women, not because they are easier or more lucrative targets but because they are on the streets more. Nor is the connection between disorderliness and fear made only by the elderly. Susan Estrich, of the Harvard Law School, has recently gathered together a number of surveys on the sources of public fear. One, done in Portland, Oregon, indicated that three fourths of the adults interviewed cross to the other side of a https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 7 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM street when they see a gang of teenagers; another survey, in Baltimore, discovered that nearly half would cross the street to avoid even a single strange youth. When an interviewer asked people in a housing project where the most dangerous spot was, they mentioned a place where young persons gathered to drink and play music, despite the fact that not a single crime had occurred there. In Boston public housing projects, the greatest fear was expressed by persons living in the buildings where disorderliness and incivility, not crime, were the greatest. Knowing this helps one understand the significance of such otherwise harmless displays as subway graffiti. As Nathan Glazer has written, the proliferation of graffiti, even when not obscene, confronts the subway rider with the inescapable knowledge that the environment he must endure for an hour or more a day is uncontrolled and uncontrollable, and that anyone can invade it to do whatever damage and mischief the mind suggests." In response to fear people avoid one another, weakening controls. Sometimes they call the police. Patrol cars arrive, an occasional arrest occurs but crime continues and disorder is not abated. Citizens complain to the police chief, but he explains that his department is low on personnel and that the courts do not punish petty or first-time offenders. To the residents, the police who arrive in squad cars are either ineffective or uncaring: to the police, the residents are animals who deserve each other. The citizens may soon stop calling the police, because "they can't do anything." The process we call urban decay has occurred for centuries in every city. But what is happening today is different in at least two important respects. First, in the period before, say, World War II, city dwellers- because of money costs, transportation difficulties, familial and church connections—could rarely move away from neighborhood problems. When movement did occur, it tended to be along public-transit routes. Now mobility has become exceptionally easy for all https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 8 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM but the poorest or those who are blocked by racial prejudice. Earlier crime waves had a kind of built-in self-correcting mechanism: the determination of a neighborhood or community to reassert control over its turf. Areas in Chicago, New York, and Boston would experience crime and gang wars, and then normalcy would return, as the families for whom no alternative residences were possible reclaimed their authority over the streets. Second, the police in this earlier period assisted in that reassertion of authority by acting, sometimes violently, on behalf of the community. Young toughs were roughed up, people were arrested "on suspicion" or for vagrancy, and prostitutes and petty thieves were routed. "Rights" were something enjoyed by decent folk, and perhaps also by the serious professional criminal, who avoided violence and could afford a lawyer. This pattern of policing was not an aberration or the result of occasional excess. From the earliest days of the nation, the police function was seen primarily as that of a night watchman: to maintain order against the chief threats to order— fire, wild animals, and disreputable behavior. Solving crimes was viewed not as a police responsibility but as a private one. In the March, 1969, Atlantic, one of us (Wilson) wrote a brief account of how the police role had slowly changed from maintaining order to fighting crimes. The change began with the creation of private detectives (often ex-criminals), who worked on a contingency-fee basis for individuals who had suffered losses. In time, the detectives were absorbed in municipal agencies and paid a regular salary simultaneously, the responsibility for prosecuting thieves was shifted from the aggrieved private citizen to the professional prosecutor. This process was not complete in most places until the twentieth century. In the l960s, when urban riots were a major problem, social scientists began to https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 9 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM explore carefully the order maintenance function of the police, and to suggest ways of improving it—not to make streets safer (its original function) but to reduce the incidence of mass violence. Order maintenance became, to a degree, coterminous with "community relations." But, as the crime wave that began in the early l960s continued without abatement throughout the decade and into the 1970s, attention shifted to the role of the police as crime-fighters. Studies of police behavior ceased, by and large, to be accounts of the order-maintenance function and became, instead, efforts to propose and test ways whereby the police could solve more crimes, make more arrests, and gather better evidence. If these things could be done, social scientists assumed, citizens would be less fearful. A great deal was accomplished during this transition, as both police chiefs and outside experts emphasized the crime-fighting function in their plans, in the allocation of resources, and in deployment of personnel. The police may well have become better crime-fighters as a result. And doubtless they remained aware of their responsibility for order. But the link between order-maintenance and crime-prevention, so obvious to earlier generations, was forgotten. That link is similar to the process whereby one broken window becomes many. The citizen who fears the ill-smelling drunk, the rowdy teenager, or the importuning beggar is not merely expressing his distaste for unseemly behavior; he is also giving voice to a bit of folk wisdom that happens to be a correct generalization—namely, that serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked. The unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window. Muggers and robbers, whether opportunistic or professional, believe they reduce their chances of being caught or even identified if they operate on streets where potential victims are already intimidated by prevailing conditions. If the neighborhood cannot keep a bothersome https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 10 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM panhandler from annoying passersby, the thief may reason, it is even less likely to call the police to identify a potential mugger or to interfere if the mugging actually takes place. Some police administrators concede that this process occurs, but argue that motorized-patrol officers can deal with it as effectively as foot patrol officers. We are not so sure. In theory, an officer in a squad car can observe as much as an officer on foot; in theory, the former can talk to as many people as the latter. But the reality of police-citizen encounters is powerfully altered by the automobile. An officer on foot cannot separate himself from the street people; if he is approached, only his uniform and his personality can help him manage whatever is about to happen. And he can never be certain what that will be—a request for directions, a plea for help, an angry denunciation, a teasing remark, a confused babble, a threatening gesture. In a car, an officer is more likely to deal with street people by rolling down the window and looking at them. The door and the window exclude the approaching citizen; they are a barrier. Some officers take advantage of this barrier, perhaps unconsciously, by acting differently if in the car than they would on foot. We have seen this countless times. The police car pulls up to a corner where teenagers are gathered. The window is rolled down. The officer stares at the youths. They stare back. The officer says to one, "C'mere." He saunters over, conveying to his friends by his elaborately casual style the idea that he is not intimidated by authority. What's your name?" "Chuck." "Chuck who?" "Chuck Jones." "What'ya doing, Chuck?" "Nothin'." "Got a P.O. [parole officer]?" "Nah." "Sure?" "Yeah." "Stay out of trouble, Chuckie." Meanwhile, the other boys laugh and exchange comments among themselves, probably at the officer's expense. The officer stares harder. He cannot be certain what is being said, nor can he join in and, by displaying his own skill at street banter, prove that he cannot be "put https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 11 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM down." In the process, the officer has learned almost nothing, and the boys have decided the officer is an alien force who can safely be disregarded, even mocked. Our experience is that most citizens like to talk to a police officer. Such exchanges give them a sense of importance, provide them with the basis for gossip, and allow them to explain to the authorities what is worrying them (whereby they gain a modest but significant sense of having "done something" about the problem). You approach a person on foot more easily, and talk to him more readily, than you do a person in a car. Moreover, you can more easily retain some anonymity if you draw an officer aside for a private chat. Suppose you want to pass on a tip about who is stealing handbags, or who offered to sell you a stolen TV. In the inner city, the culprit, in all likelihood, lives nearby. To walk up to a marked patrol car and lean in the window is to convey a visible signal that you are a "fink." The essence of the police role in maintaining order is to reinforce the informal control mechanisms of the community itself. The police cannot, without committing extraordinary resources, provide a substitute for that informal control. On the other hand, to reinforce those natural forces the police must accommodate them. And therein lies the problem. Should police activity on the street be shaped, in important ways, by the standards of the neighborhood rather than by the rules of the state? Over the past two decades, the shift of police from order-maintenance to law enforcement has brought them increasingly under the influence of legal restrictions, provoked by media complaints and enforced by court decisions and departmental orders. As a consequence, the order maintenance functions of the police are now governed by rules developed to control police relations with suspected criminals. This is, we think, an entirely new development. For centuries, the role of the police as https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 12 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM watchmen was judged primarily not in terms of its compliance with appropriate procedures but rather in terms of its attaining a desired objective. The objective was order, an inherently ambiguous term but a condition that people in a given community recognized when they saw it. The means were the same as those the community itself would employ, if its members were sufficiently determined, courageous, and authoritative. Detecting and apprehending criminals, by contrast, was a means to an end, not an end in itself; a judicial determination of guilt or innocence was the hoped-for result of the law-enforcement mode. From the first, the police were expected to follow rules defining that process, though states differed in how stringent the rules should be. The criminal-apprehension process was always understood to involve individual rights, the violation of which was unacceptable because it meant that the violating officer would be acting as a judge and jury—and that was not his job. Guilt or innocence was to be determined by universal standards under special procedures. Ordinarily, no judge or jury ever sees the persons caught up in a dispute over the appropriate level of neighborhood order. That is true not only because most cases are handled informally on the street but also because no universal standards are available to settle arguments over disorder, and thus a judge may not be any wiser or more effective than a police officer. Until quite recently in many states, and even today in some places, the police made arrests on such charges as "suspicious person" or "vagrancy" or "public drunkenness"—charges with scarcely any legal meaning. These charges exist not because society wants judges to punish vagrants or drunks but because it wants an officer to have the legal tools to remove undesirable persons from a neighborhood when informal efforts to preserve order in the streets have failed. Once we begin to think of all aspects of police work as involving the application of universal rules under special procedures, we inevitably ask what constitutes https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 13 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM an "undesirable person" and why we should "criminalize" vagrancy or drunkenness. A strong and commendable desire to see that people are treated fairly makes us worry about allowing the police to rout persons who are undesirable by some vague or parochial standard. A growing and not-socommendable utilitarianism leads us to doubt that any behavior that does not "hurt" another person should be made illegal. And thus many of us who watch over the police are reluctant to allow them to perform, in the only way they can, a function that every neighborhood desperately wants them to perform. This wish to "decriminalize" disreputable behavior that "harms no one"- and thus remove the ultimate sanction the police can employ to maintain neighborhood order—is, we think, a mistake. Arresting a single drunk or a single vagrant who has harmed no identifiable person seems unjust, and in a sense it is. But failing to do anything about a score of drunks or a hundred vagrants may destroy an entire community. A particular rule that seems to make sense in the individual case makes no sense when it is made a universal rule and applied to all cases. It makes no sense because it fails to take into account the connection between one broken window left untended and a thousand broken windows. Of course, agencies other than the police could attend to the problems posed by drunks or the mentally ill, but in most communities especially where the "deinstitutionalization" movement has been strong—they do not. The concern about equity is more serious. We might agree that certain behavior makes one person more undesirable than another but how do we ensure that age or skin color or national origin or harmless mannerisms will not also become the basis for distinguishing the undesirable from the desirable? How do we ensure, in short, that the police do not become the agents of neighborhood bigotry? We can offer no wholly satisfactory answer to this important question. We are https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 14 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM not confident that there is a satisfactory answer except to hope that by their selection, training, and supervision, the police will be inculcated with a clear sense of the outer limit of their discretionary authority. That limit, roughly, is this—the police exist to help regulate behavior, not to maintain the racial or ethnic purity of a neighborhood. Consider the case of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago, one of the largest public-housing projects in the country. It is home for nearly 20,000 people, all black, and extends over ninety-two acres along South State Street. It was named after a distinguished black who had been, during the 1940s, chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority. Not long after it opened, in 1962, relations between project residents and the police deteriorated badly. The citizens felt that the police were insensitive or brutal; the police, in turn, complained of unprovoked attacks on them. Some Chicago officers tell of times when they were afraid to enter the Homes. Crime rates soared. Today, the atmosphere has changed. Police-citizen relations have improved— apparently, both sides learned something from the earlier experience. Recently, a boy stole a purse and ran off. Several young persons who saw the theft voluntarily passed along to the police information on the identity and residence of the thief, and they did this publicly, with friends and neighbors looking on. But problems persist, chief among them the presence of youth gangs that terrorize residents and recruit members in the project. The people expect the police to "do something" about this, and the police are determined to do just that. But do what? Though the police can obviously make arrests whenever a gang member breaks the law, a gang can form, recruit, and congregate without breaking the law. And only a tiny fraction of gang-related crimes can be solved https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 15 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM by an arrest; thus, if an arrest is the only recourse for the police, the residents' fears will go unassuaged. The police will soon feel helpless, and the residents will again believe that the police "do nothing." What the police in fact do is to chase known gang members out of the project. In the words of one officer, "We kick ass." Project residents both know and approve of this. The tacit police-citizen alliance in the project is reinforced by the police view that the cops and the gangs are the two rival sources of power in the area, and that the gangs are not going to win. None of this is easily reconciled with any conception of due process or fair treatment. Since both residents and gang members are black, race is not a factor. But it could be. Suppose a white project confronted a black gang, or vice versa. We would be apprehensive about the police taking sides. But the substantive problem remains the same: how can the police strengthen the informal socialcontrol mechanisms of natural communities in order to minimize fear in public places? Law enforcement, per se, is no answer: a gang can weaken or destroy a community by standing about in a menacing fashion and speaking rudely to passersby without breaking the law. We have difficulty thinking about such matters, not simply because the ethical and legal issues are so complex but because we have become accustomed to thinking of the law in essentially individualistic terms. The law defines my rights, punishes his behavior and is applied by that officer because of this harm. We assume, in thinking this way, that what is good for the individual will be good for the community and what doesn't matter when it happens to one person won't matter if it happens to many. Ordinarily, those are plausible assumptions. But in cases where behavior that is tolerable to one person is intolerable to many others, the reactions of the others—fear, withdrawal, flight—may ultimately make matters worse for everyone, including the individual who first professed his https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 16 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM indifference. It may be their greater sensitivity to communal as opposed to individual needs that helps explain why the residents of small communities are more satisfied with their police than are the residents of similar neighborhoods in big cities. Elinor Ostrom and her co-workers at Indiana University compared the perception of police services in two poor, all-black Illinois towns—Phoenix and East Chicago Heights with those of three comparable all-black neighborhoods in Chicago. The level of criminal victimization and the quality of police-community relations appeared to be about the same in the towns and the Chicago neighborhoods. But the citizens living in their own villages were much more likely than those living in the Chicago neighborhoods to say that they do not stay at home for fear of crime, to agree that the local police have "the right to take any action necessary" to deal with problems, and to agree that the police "look out for the needs of the average citizen." It is possible that the residents and the police of the small towns saw themselves as engaged in a collaborative effort to maintain a certain standard of communal life, whereas those of the big city felt themselves to be simply requesting and supplying particular services on an individual basis. If this is true, how should a wise police chief deploy his meager forces? The first answer is that nobody knows for certain, and the most prudent course of action would be to try further variations on the Newark experiment, to see more precisely what works in what kinds of neighborhoods. The second answer is also a hedge—many aspects of order maintenance in neighborhoods can probably best be handled in ways that involve the police minimally if at all. A busy bustling shopping center and a quiet, well-tended suburb may need almost no visible police presence. In both cases, the ratio of respectable to disreputable people is ordinarily so high as to make informal social control effective. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 17 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM Even in areas that are in jeopardy from disorderly elements, citizen action without substantial police involvement may be sufficient. Meetings between teenagers who like to hang out on a particular corner and adults who want to use that corner might well lead to an amicable agreement on a set of rules about how many people can be allowed to congregate, where, and when. Where no understanding is possible—or if possible, not observed—citizen patrols may be a sufficient response. There are two traditions of communal involvement in maintaining order: One, that of the "community watchmen," is as old as the first settlement of the New World. Until well into the nineteenth century, volunteer watchmen, not policemen, patrolled their communities to keep order. They did so, by and large, without taking the law into their own hands—without, that is, punishing persons or using force. Their presence deterred disorder or alerted the community to disorder that could not be deterred. There are hundreds of such efforts today in communities all across the nation. Perhaps the best known is that of the Guardian Angels, a group of unarmed young persons in distinctive berets and T-shirts, who first came to public attention when they began patrolling the New York City subways but who claim now to have chapters in more than thirty American cities. Unfortunately, we have little information about the effect of these groups on crime. It is possible, however, that whatever their effect on crime, citizens find their presence reassuring, and that they thus contribute to maintaining a sense of order and civility. The second tradition is that of the "vigilante." Rarely a feature of the settled communities of the East, it was primarily to be found in those frontier towns that grew up in advance of the reach of government. More than 350 vigilante groups are known to have existed; their distinctive feature was that their members did take the law into their own hands, by acting as judge, jury, and often executioner as well as policeman. Today, the vigilante movement is conspicuous by its rarity, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 18 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM despite the great fear expressed by citizens that the older cities are becoming "urban frontiers." But some community-watchmen groups have skirted the line, and others may cross it in the future. An ambiguous case, reported in The Wall Street Journal involved a citizens' patrol in the Silver Lake area of Belleville, New Jersey. A leader told the reporter, "We look for outsiders." If a few teenagers from outside the neighborhood enter it, "we ask them their business," he said. "If they say they're going down the street to see Mrs. Jones, fine, we let them pass. But then we follow them down the block to make sure they're really going to see Mrs. Jones." Though citizens can do a great deal, the police are plainly the key to order maintenance. For one thing, many communities, such as the Robert Taylor Homes, cannot do the job by themselves. For another, no citizen in a neighborhood, even an organized one, is likely to feel the sense of responsibility that wearing a badge confers. Psychologists have done many studies on why people fail to go to the aid of persons being attacked or seeking help, and they have learned that the cause is not "apathy" or "selfishness" but the absence of some plausible grounds for feeling that one must personally accept responsibility. Ironically, avoiding responsibility is easier when a lot of people are standing about. On streets and in public places, where order is so important, many people are likely to be "around," a fact that reduces the chance of any one person acting as the agent of the community. The police officer's uniform singles him out as a person who must accept responsibility if asked. In addition, officers, more easily than their fellow citizens, can be expected to distinguish between what is necessary to protect the safety of the street and what merely protects its ethnic purity. But the police forces of America are losing, not gaining, members. Some cities have suffered substantial cuts in the number of officers available for duty. These https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 19 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM cuts are not likely to be reversed in the near future. Therefore, each department must assign its existing officers with great care. Some neighborhoods are so demoralized and crime-ridden as to make foot patrol useless; the best the police can do with limited resources is respond to the enormous number of calls for service. Other neighborhoods are so stable and serene as to make foot patrol unnecessary. The key is to identify neighborhoods at the tipping point—where the public order is deteriorating but not unreclaimable, where the streets are used frequently but by apprehensive people, where a window is likely to be broken at any time, and must quickly be fixed if all are not to be shattered. Most police departments do not have ways of systematically identifying such areas and assigning officers to them. Officers are assigned on the basis of crime rates (meaning that marginally threatened areas are often stripped so that police can investigate crimes in areas where the situation is hopeless) or on the basis of calls for service (despite the fact that most citizens do not call the police when they are merely frightened or annoyed). To allocate patrol wisely, the department must look at the neighborhoods and decide, from first-hand evidence, where an additional officer will make the greatest difference in promoting a sense of safety. One way to stretch limited police resources is being tried in some public housing projects. Tenant organizations hire off-duty police officers for patrol work in their buildings. The costs are not high (at least not per resident), the officer likes the additional income, and the residents feel safer. Such arrangements are probably more successful than hiring private watchmen, and the Newark experiment helps us understand why. A private security guard may deter crime or misconduct by his presence, and he may go to the aid of persons needing help, but he may well not intervene—that is, control or drive away—someone challenging community standards. Being a sworn officer—a "real cop"—seems to https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 20 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM give one the confidence, the sense of duty, and the aura of authority necessary to perform this difficult task. Patrol officers might be encouraged to go to and from duty stations on public transportation and, while on the bus or subway car, enforce rules about smoking, drinking, disorderly conduct, and the like. The enforcement need involve nothing more than ejecting the offender (the offense, after all, is not one with which a booking officer or a judge wishes to be bothered). Perhaps the random but relentless maintenance of standards on buses would lead to conditions on buses that approximate the level of civility we now take for granted on airplanes. But the most important requirement is to think that to maintain order in precarious situations is a vital job. The police know this is one of their functions, and they also believe, correctly, that it cannot be done to the exclusion of criminal investigation and responding to calls. We may have encouraged them to suppose, however, on the basis of our oft-repeated concerns about serious, violent crime, that they will be judged exclusively on their capacity as crimefighters. To the extent that this is the case, police administrators will continue to concentrate police personnel in the highest-crime areas (though not necessarily in the areas most vulnerable to criminal invasion), emphasize their training in the law and criminal apprehension (and not their training in managing street life), and join too quickly in campaigns to decriminalize "harmless" behavior (though public drunkenness, street prostitution, and pornographic displays can destroy a community more quickly than any team of professional burglars). Above all, we must return to our long-abandoned view that the police ought to protect communities as well as individuals. Our crime statistics and victimization surveys measure individual losses, but they do not measure communal losses. Just as physicians now recognize the importance of fostering https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 21 of 22 Broken Windows - The Atlantic 1/8/18, 3'12 PM health rather than simply treating illness, so the police—and the rest of us—ought to recognize the importance of maintaining, intact, communities without broken windows. LATEST VIDEO  DOW L O A D P Dog D F Grooming The Weird, Wondrous World ofN Competitive View PDF,are Download Here At the world's largest grooming To show, dogs transformed into fantastical works of art. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03/broken-windows/304465/ Page 22 of 22 Race and Justice http://raj.sagepub.com/ Racial Disparity in Police Contacts Robert D. Crutchfield, Martie L. Skinner, Kevin P. Haggerty, Anne McGlynn and Richard F. Catalano Race and Justice 2012 2: 179 DOI: 10.1177/2153368712448063 The online version of this article can be found at: http://raj.sagepub.com/content/2/3/179 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: Official Journal of the American Society of Criminology, Division on People on Color and Crime Additional services and information for Race and Justice can be found at: Email Alerts: http://raj.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://raj.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://raj.sagepub.com/content/2/3/179.refs.html >> Version of Record - Jun 29, 2012 What is This? Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 Racial Disparity in Police Contacts Race and Justice 2(3) 179-202 ª The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/2153368712448063 http://raj.sagepub.com Robert D. Crutchfield1, Martie L. Skinner1, Kevin P. Haggerty1, Anne McGlynn1, and Richard F. Catalano1 Abstract Criminologists agree the race disparity in arrests cannot be fully explained by differences in criminal behavior. The authors examine social environment factors that may lead to racial differences in police contact in early adolescence, including family, peers, school, and community. Data are from 331 eighth-grade students. Blacks were almost twice as likely as Whites to report a police contact. Blacks reported more property crime but not more violent crime than Whites. Police contacts were increased by having a parent who had been arrested, a sibling involved in criminal activity, higher observed reward for negative behavior, having school disciplinary actions, and knowing adults who engaged in substance abuse or criminal behavior. Race differences in police contacts were partially attributable to more school discipline. Keywords race disparity, police contacts, environment Introduction For more than 30 years, criminologists have studied racial differences in criminal justice experiences. Studies have considered both juvenile and adult patterns of arrest (Piliavin & Briar, 1964), conviction (Adler, 2006; Harmon, 2004), and sentencing (Kleck, 1981). These studies have traced individuals in the criminal (Engen, Gainey, Crutchfield, & Weis, 2003) and juvenile justice systems (Bridges & Steen, 1998), and a number of studies have considered correlates of aggregate race differences in criminal justice processing (Blumstein, 1982; Bridges & Crutchfield, 1988). Results 1 University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA Corresponding Author: Martie L. Skinner, University of Washington, 9725 3rd Ave. NE, Suite 401, Seattle, WA 98115, USA Email: skinnm@u.washington.edu Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 180 Race and Justice 2(3) vary about how much racial disparity exists and about the proportion of observed differences that can be attributed to legally relevant variables, (e.g., criminal involvement, offense seriousness, and offenders’ criminal histories). Though criminologists do not agree on the proportion of racial differences in criminal justice processing that can be explained by legal differences, they do concur that not all of the observable disparity can be explained by legally relevant race differences (Blumstein, 1982; Crutchfield, Bridges, & Pitchford, 1994; Crutchfield, Fernandes, & Martinez, 2010; Langan, 1985). What then explains why people of color have more contacts with police, have higher arrest and conviction rates, and are more likely to spend time in prison? The popular answer is discrimination on the part of police, prosecutors, and judges. Unfortunately, we cannot directly assess with standard quantitative analytic methods either specific acts of discrimination or racist sentiments on the part of criminal justice officials while performing their duties. Not surprisingly, officials generally do not reveal on questionnaires or in interviews that they are prejudiced. Laboratory research on implicit bias (Greenwald, Oakes, & Hoffman, 2003; Joy-Gaba & Nosek, 2010) has made important strides measuring unconscious reactions to race by studying physiological changes produced by controlled stimuli, but this methodology does not apply well to field studies to definitively draw conclusions about discriminatory attitudes or behaviors in criminal justice settings. Qualitative studies have reported subtle forms of racial biases on the part of court actors (Bridges & Steen, 1998; Harris, 2009). So discrimination remains a viable interpretation of legally unexplained racial differences in criminal justice decisions; but one difficult to measure in large field studies. Another possible explanation is seemingly racially neutral criminal justice practices, such as bail standards that emphasize the importance of defendant characteristics, disadvantage some segments of the population (e.g., residential stability disadvantaging migrant workers). Here we focus on racial differences in police contacts for juveniles. Obviously, one reason that young people come into contact with police is delinquency. We address two questions: first, are there racial differences in police contacts which are not explained by criminal involvement, and second, are there features of social life that help explain these differences. Differential contacts with the police are important because they potentially put young people who have these experiences at risk in other aspects of their lives. We more fully discuss these risks below. Garland (2001, p. 114) argues that in the wake of the upheaval, riots, and criticisms in the 1960s and 1970s, police strove to become more professional and used more technology, and moved away from close community contact. Because that approach did not produce reductions in crime, police departments changed their strategies, leading to widespread adoption of community policing practices in the last decades of the 20th century. The earlier period, where professionalization was stressed, led to poor interaction with the populace, especially poor and minority communities. The newer community policing approach brings officers into more daily contact with the public. This means that young people are now more likely to encounter police in a broad array of their social environments, including in their neighborhoods and schools. Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 Crutchfield et al. 181 If the social environments of young people of color and White juveniles differ, the former may be at greater risk of having contacts with police independent of their involvement in delinquency. If the former are more likely to live, go to school, and work where there is greater police presence or where there is more surveillance, they may be more likely to come to the attention of the criminal justice system. For instance, Krivo and Peterson (1996) report that racial residential segregation consigns African Americans to neighborhoods where they are more likely to experience victimization. To the extent that police departments focus patrols where there is more crime (Bayley, 2008; Brunson & Weitzer, 2009), or where police perceive there to be more crime (Beckett, Nyrop, & Pfingst, 2006), African Americans are at greater risk of encounters with police. In this article, we will examine several important ‘‘environments’’ to assess the extent to which, in the face of community policing, they increase the likelihood that young African Americans will be more likely to have police contacts than Whites above and beyond what would be expected by observable differences in delinquency. Racial differences in criminal justice processing go to the heart of our collective notions of fairness and justice. When the questions are about juveniles they take on added importance. Labeling theorists, more than three decades ago (Becker, 1963; Schur, 1969) convinced us, and continue to affirm (Bernburg, Krohn, & Rivera, 2006; Tapia, 2011) the formative influence of interactions with agents of social control. Braithwaite (1989), in making the case for re-integrative shaming, criticized normal justice procedures for engaging in ‘‘shaming’’ that is disintegrative (stigmatization). Here we take their invocations to heart in our effort to study social environment factors that contribute to race differences in police contacts. When teens have adverse interactions with police, the consequences can be longer lasting than for adults (Brunson & Weitzer, 2009). If they are not treated fairly, or if they perceive that they are not treated fairly, their future behavior and interactions with law enforcement might be negatively affected. The question of the propriety of the behavior of police and other justice actors is also important to communities of color. When communities observe differences that cannot be explained, it potentially gives credence to an injustice narrative that harms community–police relations. So, as Garland (2001) described, officers engaging in community policing seek to have more interactions with citizens, but this presents risk for perceptions of police, and for the youths themselves who interact with officers. Here we do not test Garland’s assertion that community policing leads to more public/police interaction. He more than adequately makes the case, as does the continuing existence of the Federal COPS Office in the Justice Department, whose website states their mission as to ‘‘advance the practice of community policing in America’s state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies’’ (http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/). Our purpose here is to examine the extent to which, in the context of contemporary policing, there are racial disparities in juveniles’ contacts with police that cannot be accounted for by differential delinquency involvement. And, if there are unaccounted for disparities, how do the social environments experienced by juveniles explain them? Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 182 Race and Justice 2(3) Here we are interested not in arrest or subsequent decision points in the juvenile justice system, but in contact with police. Of course, contact is a necessary condition for arrest, but we should no more presume that the former has only benign effects on children, than we should assume that all contacts with police are negative. While some effects of contacts appear immediately (e.g., arrest and its aftermath), others may show up later, some much later. The nature and consequences of such effects is an empirical question that gains importance if there are racial differences in likelihood that juveniles have contact with officers. Skogan (2006) reported that while negative interactions between citizens and police have the predictable effect of increasing hostile feelings and cynicism, positive interactions do not help, they have no substantial effect at all. One wonders if such patterns are exacerbated in minority communities where predominantly negative narratives about police–minority community relations are present. Racial Disparities in Crime and Criminal Justice We are not the first to analyze social environments and police contacts. Stewart, Baumer, Brunson, and Simons (2009) studied neighborhood context and Black youths’ perceptions of police treatment. The environment did matter. Black youths were more likely to have adverse interactions with police when they were in White neighborhoods, especially those with growing Black populations. Similar patterns were uncovered by Brunson and Weitzer (2009) in a qualitative study of both Black and White juveniles in low-income communities. Tapia (2010) found that both race and social class were significant predictors of juvenile arrests, but interestingly, being ‘‘out of place,’’ a minority person in a nonminority neighborhood, resulted in stronger effects for higher income Blacks than for those of lower socioeconomic status (SES). Here we add to this line of research by examining the experiences of young Black and White juveniles in two important social environments, as well as individual and family characteristics, while accounting for self-reported level of involvement in delinquency. Offenders, including juveniles, are arrested because they do something wrong. Perhaps, people have contact with police because of their suspicious behavior or because they are in places where they probably should not be. Though some people concur with such statements (Wilbanks, 1987), research results have long shown that it is not so simple. For nearly 40 years, criminologists have periodically explored the factors which lead police to make an arrest once they have made contact with a suspect. Piliavin and Briar (1964) stressed the importance of suspects’ demeanor. Black and Reiss (1970) found that the seriousness of offense and the wishes of victims (when present) influence police the most in their decisions to make an arrest. Recently, Beckett and her colleagues (2006) reported that police drug enforcement practices affect who is arrested more than behavior patterns of users and sellers. Other researchers have also reported that suspects’ demeanor and nonlegal factors such as race, social class, and gender affect police decision making when they encounter citizens (Dai & Nation, 2009). And, Brunson and Weitzer (2011) have documented Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 Crutchfield et al. 183 that citizens, particularly in inner-city neighborhoods, try to prepare their children for ‘‘unwelcome’’ contact with police because of the potential for escalation during encounters. Generally, researchers have found that not all of the observed racial differences in police contact, arrest, or incarceration can be explained by patterns of criminal behavior. Three coordinated studies, in Denver, Rochester, and Seattle, used existing longitudinal data sets to examine the extent to which arrest and charging decisions could be accounted for by self-reported involvement in delinquency (Huizinga et al., 2007). While there were modest differences across the sites, the investigators all found that the racial differences in arrest were attenuated by differences in self-reported offending, but the race differences in police contacts remained statistically significant and substantial. These researchers, like others who have studied racial disparities, acknowledge that discrimination may be a part of the explanation of higher arrest and charging of Black youth, but they cannot dismiss other unmeasured reasons for the unexplained race differences. By examining critical environments that may lead to more police contact for Black juveniles beyond what would be expected by differences in offending behavior, we can specify important, previously unmeasured forces affecting racial differences. The two environments that we focus on are school and community, while also considering individual, familial, and peer influences. Race and Environment When discussing discrimination, the general public and many criminal and juvenile justice practitioners mean that criminal justice agents make racially prejudiced decisions to arrest, prosecute, or to sentence. It is possible, even likely, that this happens sometimes. But this alone is too limited of a conception of how race can negatively affect outcomes. In the United States, African Americans are at greater risk of victimization, school dropout, unemployment, and a host of other problems, in part, because they live in racially segregated communities (Massey, 1990; Peterson & Krivo, 1999, 2010; Williams & Collins, 2001). Racial residential segregation is a direct result of discriminatory practices in real estate markets and in mortgage lending (Charles, 2003; Munnell, Tootell, Browne, & McEneaney, 1996; Oliver & Shapiro, 1995; Ross & Yinger, 2002). The consequences of segregated communities are examples of institutionalized racism, not just individual prejudice. The environments in which African Americans live are the consequences of continuing racialized patterns of social life (Massey & Denton, 1993; Peterson & Krivo, 2010). Peterson and Krivo (2010) advance what they call ‘‘a structural race perspective’’ to explain how stratification affects those living in Black and Latino neighborhoods. They write: ‘‘ . . . the internal structural conditions of neighborhoods and the circumstances of surrounding areas are fundamentally racialized in ways that specifically reinforce and maintain superiority in the local contexts of Whites, and widespread deprivation in the contexts of African Americans, Latinos, and sometimes others’’ (Peterson & Krivo, 2010, p. 115). In the current analyses, we integrate a basic tenant of labeling theory, that particular social statuses (such as race), help to Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 184 Race and Justice 2(3) determine who is subjected to social control, with the structural race perspective of Peterson and Krivo, to add a micro-level component that allows us to specify elements of environments that may cause the negative outcomes from contemporary policing practices written about by Garland (2001). And these negative outcomes add to the structured inequality faced by people of color. We expect that characteristics of juveniles will in part explain variation in their contacts with police. Those engaging in delinquency, reasonably, will have more police contact, but several other individual-level patterns may also increase the probability of contact. While these are not legally relevant factors that can be said to ‘‘account’’ for observed racial differences in police interactions, familial and peer characteristics may lead to differential contact. We discuss our reasons for these predictions below. We also expect that two particular environments, school and community, are especially important for explaining racial differences in police contacts. Important racial differences in these environments make it more likely that African Americans will experience more police contacts than would be expected by any observably higher involvement in self-reported delinquent behavior. Police presence in schools, particularly in schools in ‘‘trouble areas,’’ and officer engagement in ‘‘problem communities’’ increase the likelihood of having contact with officers. Clearly, these two environments, schools and communities, are neither mutually exclusive nor independent of one another or from familial or peer group characteristics. Several careful qualitative studies demonstrate this in examinations of school violence. Brunson and Miller (2009) found that violence in school is linked to the disadvantage and violence that occurs in communities where students live. Mateu-Gelabert (2000) used ethnography to study the bidirectionality of school and neighborhood violence. And in a subsequent study, he reports that schools that foster commitment to education can counter the negative effects of street codes that students are exposed to in their home communities (Mateu-Gelabert & Lune, 2007). Sullivan (2002) argues that to understand school violence, the individual, school, and community factors must be addressed within a nested conceptualization. Hagan, Hirschfield, and Shedd (2002) demonstrated that there are links between neighborhoods and schools where serious violence has occurred. Also, families select neighborhoods based on multiple factors, including cost, and in doing so make choices about schools and the peers to which their children will be exposed. And Hellman and Beaton (1986) report that school violence in middle school is not linked to communities, but violence in high schools is. Why do we predict that family factors will influence police contacts independent of self-reported delinquency? Family factors, including parental monitoring, parent– child attachment, and the number of siblings influence children’s behavior and experiences. We have included both problematic (risk) and nonproblematic (protective) family functioning as potential contributors to differential contacts with police. If a household has an abusive or alcoholic parent, the familial interaction and the child are affected, and such factors may especially increase the likelihood that members of the family, including children, will come to the attention of authorities. Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 Crutchfield et al. 185 How else might ‘‘bad families’’ lead to more police contacts? We can begin to answer this question by turning to old-school (and now very much discredited as social science) criminology, where the Jukes and the Kallikaks, two 19th-century families, were cited in very early works about the intergenerational transmission of criminal behavior (Sutherland, 1924). Presumably, local authorities of that day would have looked at the younger members of the Juke and Kallikak clans when there was trouble about because they were so frequently involved in trouble. A more compelling argument, though, for how families might increase police contacts, independent of the behavior of children, is provided by Anderson (1999). Members of ‘‘street families,’’ adhering to the ‘‘code of the street,’’ will get in trouble with the law (Anderson, 1999). In this era of community policing, it is likely that effective officers will have knowledge of who are in such families. In these situations, they may be more likely to seek out members of those families for questioning, just as 19th-century constables looked to the Jukes and the Kallikaks when something bad happened. Families will not only affect the behavior of juveniles, but we predict that, independent of that behavior, children from ‘‘problem families’’ will get more police attention, warranted or not. Family influences might be considered those most proximal to the teen, whereas peer influences are only slightly less so. Associating with deviant peers is one of the primary risk factors for engaging in problem behavior (Brody et al., 2001), but may also lead more directly to contact with law enforcement. As might be the case with family members, peers may also have had previous contact with law enforcement. Teens who associate with other teens who engage in illegal activity are more likely to experience a police contact regardless of their own illegal activity. No institution other than the family so dominates children’s lives as their school. A major portion of their waking hours are spent there and, at least for those who do homework, school affects even the time not spent there. School also heavily influences young people’s behavior. Those who are educationally successful are more likely to develop attachments to school and have positive feelings toward their teachers, and as a result are less likely to be delinquent (Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Newcomb et al., 2002). School environments affect children’s social lives in positive directions through extracurricular activities, friendships, and budding love lives; and in negative directions through rivalries, bullies, and gangs. Peer relations in school are important determinants of young people’s social status (Corsaro & Eder, 1990). Some students go to schools that must be equipped with metal detectors, others do not. Some schools have guards or police on hand while others have the luxury of not worrying so much about security. It is likely that these and other environmental differences will affect both delinquency and police contact. And because of the racial residential distribution of the American population, school environments vary by race. School environments are likely to affect the probability that a student will have police contact, above what might be expected based on behavior, in two ways: directly in school and indirectly in the community. First, if there is a police presence in the schools, officers may become involved in school discipline issues that would not have provoked a police response in the community. During the period when the data that we are using was collected, all Seattle middle schools had officers assigned to them.1 Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 186 Race and Justice 2(3) Typically, one officer was assigned to two or three schools. The actual police presence in schools depended on the perceived need. Likely those schools with more discipline problems or those with more ‘‘at-risk’’ students had more actual ‘‘officer present’’ times. The officers had some discretion in how they allocated their time. It is easy to imagine that schools may have used the officers in ‘‘get tough’’ discipline strategies, but Seattle Police Department policy was that they not be involved in standard, noncriminal problems. But readers should recognize that officers may have intervened in the belief that early intervention would deter wayward children from a life of crime. This is, of course, the philosophy of the early juvenile courts (Platt, 1969). A second means by which school environments might produce racial disparities in police contacts is school discipline. Kirk (2008) reports there are common (school and community) social control linkages between school suspension and juvenile arrest. And other researchers report that African American students are more likely to be suspended or expelled from school (Eitle & Eitle, 2004; Gordon, Piana, & Keleher, 2000; Skiba, Michael, Nardo, & Peterson, 2002). Seattle Public Schools, like other districts, has a history of racial disparity in school discipline, including suspensions (Wright, 2005), and in a recent national study, the U.S. Department of Education found that African American and Latino students are more likely to receive harsher punishments (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/03/06/148032586/reportminority-students-receive-harsher-punishments). So if students are suspended, they may end up being on the street during school hours where they could potentially be viewed with suspicion. Racial residential segregation means that the neighborhoods from which young White and Black people come will be different in many important respects. It is well established that race and social disadvantage of neighborhoods—characterized by poverty, unemployment, welfare dependency, and so on—are related (de Bodman & Bennett, 2011; Jargowsky, 1996; Massey, 1990). Black children live in neighborhoods with more negative social and economic influences (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000; McLoyd, 1990). They are likely to be exposed to criminogenic forces, are more likely to be victims of crime, and more frequently live where there is greater fear of crime (Elliott, 1994; Finkelhor & Ormrod, 2001; Peterson & Krivo, 2010; Shihadeh & Flynn, 1996; Snyder & Sickmund, 2006). Consequently, there will be a greater police presence in the neighborhood environments of Black juveniles as well as in their school environments. The neighborhood or community environment can affect police contacts in two ways as well. As the criminological literature has long documented, there are important social forces that lead to higher levels of delinquency among some segments of the population (Bursik & Grasmick, 1993; Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997; Shaw & McKay, 1942), but here we are interested in forces that will increase the probability of police contacts beyond those produced by criminal involvement. Because police know which neighborhoods have higher crime rates, enforcement is concentrated there, increasing the odds that juveniles will experience police contact. A second means by which juveniles may be put at risk of involvement with the police in their community (Elliott, 1994) is by exposure to ‘‘risk-producing elements,’’ Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 Crutchfield et al. 187 specific people who officers may watch out for. Families who embrace the ‘‘code of the street’’ (Anderson, 1999; Jones, 2010; Stewart & Simons, 2010) are not just known by members of the community but also by law enforcement. Juveniles who spend time with carriers of the code of the street or who spend time where such people frequent will have more opportunities to encounter police (‘‘street’’ families are defined earlier in this article). Other researchers (mentioned above) have studied social environments and contact with justice system actors. What this study uniquely contributes is the opportunity to study the impact of multiple social environments, here measured with considerable detail, on racial differences in police contact, net of Black and White differences in self-reported delinquency. The current study complements qualitative research on school violence and extends quantitative examinations of peers, neighborhoods, and police contacts by adding simultaneous consideration of families and schools. Method Sample Parents of eighth-grade students during the 2001–2002 school year in the Seattle school district received a letter describing the study, and the parents were contacted by phone. Families were included if the teen and one or both parents consented to participate. Eligibility included self-identifying as African American or European American, speaking English as their primary language, and planning to live in the area for at least 6 months. Recruitment stopped when an adequate number of African American and European American males and females had agreed to participate. Forty-six percent of families who received letters consented (55% of African Americans and 40% of European Americans). The parents who refused were more likely to be European American, married, and had a higher education on average than those who consented. Other ethnic groups were not recruited. The sample was stratified by teen race and gender. There were significant differences by race in several demographic variables. European Americans reported higher per capita income and parental education, and African Americans reported higher prevalence of single parenthood (Table 1). Some teens in each race group selfidentified as mixed race (19.6% African American, 12.5% European American), but were included in these analyses. Most primary caregivers were female (> 80%), with 71.6% being the adolescent’s biological mother. Caregiver gender and relationship were similar across race with one exception: more African American youth had another female caregiver (e.g., grandmother, aunt) as a primary caregiver than did European American youth, w2(1) ¼ 13.95, p < .001. Data collectors went to the families’ homes. Teens and their parents completed self-administered questionnaires in their homes using laptop computers while the data collector was present. This ensured that parents did not monitor their teens’ responses. Prior to parent/teen interaction tasks, a trained research assistant set up video equipment, provided oral and written standardized instructions to each family, then left the Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 188 Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 0/1 0 to 4 0 to 4 0/1 0/1 12 to 15 785 to 83,333 0/1 0 to 5 0/1 1.03 to 3.18 1 to 4.8 1 to 4.33 0/1 1 to 5 0.63 to 3.38 2.50 to 5 1 to 4 1 to 5 Range 0.50 0.47 9,361 0.49 1.36 0.34 0.63 0.72 0.56 0.31 1.01 0.95 0.54 0.59 1.14 0.49 13.68 7,816 0.57 1.33 0.13 0.13 3.02 1.38 0.11 3.33 0.34 3.88 2.97 2.13 SD 0.49 0.68 0.49 M 0.40 0.25 0.12 Significance tests indicate race differences of *p < .05, **p < .001, ***p < .0001. Police contact Property crime Violent crime Race Gender Age Per capita income Single parent Parent juv. del. Sibling crime Family conflict Obs. reward positive behavior Obs. reward negative/problem behavior Delinquent peers Grades School discipline Parent neighborhood Teen neighborhood Deviant adult network Measure African American 0.48 13.67 21,970 0.24 1.12 0.08 0.12 3.37 1.34 0.19 3.99 0.25 3.94 3.13 1.53 0.21 0.11 0.05 M 0.50 0.40 15,958 0.43 0.97 0.27 0.52 0.68 0.46 0.39 1.11 0.69 0.39 0.54 0.83 0.41 0.37 0.25 SD European American 0.30** 0.18* 0.09 0.49 0.48 13.67 15,025*** 0.40*** 1.22 0.11 0.00*** 3.20*** 1.36 0.15* 3.66*** 0.04*** 3.91 3.05* 1.82*** M Total 0.46 0.55 0.39 0.50 0.50 0.44 14,913 0.49 1.18 0.31 0.59 0.72 0.51 0.36 1.11 0.88 0.47 0.57 1.04 SD Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for Police Contacts and Individual, Family, Peer, School, and Neighborhood Predictors Collected in the Eighth Grade Crutchfield et al. 189 room while the family completed the task. Upon completion of a warm-up task, the primary caregiver and the teen completed two structured interaction tasks: (a) a 10min problem-solving interaction and (b) a 5-min recognition task during which the parent and child complimented one another. Family members received $15 each time they completed questionnaires. The family received $50, and each participant (one teen and one or two parents) received $15 each for completing observational measures. Measures Police contact was collected on the teen surveys. Contact was coded as having occurred if the teen responded affirmatively to any of the following questions. Have you ever (a) been picked up or stopped by the police, but not arrested; (b) been in trouble with the police for something you did; (c) been arrested by the police; (d) spent time in a juvenile detention center for something you did wrong? Of the 331 eighth graders in the sample, 70% had no contact with police. Ninety-nine (30%) had some contact with police, 76 (23%) had ‘‘only contact’’ but were not arrested, 23 (7%) had been arrested, and 6 (less than 2%) had been placed in detention. No questions were asked about where contacts took place or any specific information about the context of the actual police contacts. Teen self-report of criminal activity was measured separately for property and violent crimes. Each was computed as the mean of 2 items measured on a 5-point scale of frequency in the past 30 days (0 ¼ never, 1 ¼ 1 to 2 times, 2 ¼ 3 to 5 times, 3 ¼ 6 to 10 times, and 4 ¼ more than 10 times). Property crime includes arson and theft. Violent crime includes carrying a gun to school and hitting someone with the intent to hurt them. Race was based on parents’ reports of their child’s race on school enrollment forms (0 ¼ White, 1 ¼ Black). Gender was reported by teens on the survey (0 ¼ male, 1 ¼ female). Age was measured in years calculated from birthdates reported on the survey and the date the survey was completed. Household per capita income was calculated from parent’s endorsement of 1 of 11 categories for annual household income (before taxes). We assigned the midpoint of the range and then divided by the number of people in the household as reported by parents on the survey. Single-parent status was reported on the parent survey (0 ¼ partnered, 1 ¼ no spouse or partner). Parent juvenile delinquency was an index based on parent retrospect accounts of their own teen years, ‘‘Before you turned 18 did you . . . .’’ Response options were 0 ¼ No and 1 ¼ Yes. The 5 items were (a) skip school, (b) get drunk, (c) run away from home overnight, (d) use a weapon in a fight, and (e) often start physical fights. Sibling criminal activity was measured with a single item, ‘‘In the past year, have any of your brothers or sisters done anything that could have gotten them in trouble with the police (like stealing, selling drugs, vandalism, etc.)’’ 0 ¼ No, 1 ¼ Yes. Family conflict was computed as the average of 13 items (a ¼ .84) taken from the Strauss Conflict Tactics scale (Straus, 1990). Response options for 8 items were a Likert-type scale from 1 to 7. One item ranged from 1 to 4, and 4 items were Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 190 Race and Justice 2(3) dichotomous. The item scores were standardized (M ¼ 0, SD ¼ 1) and then averaged. Items included ‘‘Family members often criticize each other’’ and ‘‘In the past month, how often did you yell, insult, or swear at your teen when the two of you have disagreed about something?’’ Observed rewards for positive or negative behavior were computed as composites of item responses from trained raters reviewing videotapes of parent–teen interactions. Variables were measured using the Social Development Model-Observational Coding System (Spagnolo et al., 2002). Eighteen raters (5 men, 13 women; 28% African American, 66% European American, 6% Hispanic) completed an average of 93 hours of training. Ratings were made using 5-point Likert-type scales (Not at all, A little, Sometimes, Often, Very often). Twenty percent of the videotapes were double rated to check inter-rater reliability. Inter-rater agreement was high (M ¼ 89%; Lindahl, 2001). Rewards for positive behavior was computed as the mean of seven items, including ‘‘Caregiver was warm and encouraging of teen’s opinions’’ and ‘‘Caregiver reinforced or rewarded teen’s prosocial behavior or attitudes.’’ Rewards for negative behavior was computed as the mean of 4 items, including ‘‘Caregiver failed to respond to teen’s negative or antisocial behavior or attitude’’ and ‘‘Caregiver reinforced or rewarded negative behavior or attitudes.’’ Delinquent peers were measured with teen report. The teens were asked to name their three best (or closest) friends (first names or initials only) and were then asked a series of questions about each of those friends, including having done anything in the last year that could have gotten them in trouble with the police. A dichotomous score was created, with 1 indicating at least one of the friends had engaged in the behavior. Academic success/grades were based on reports from teens: ‘‘Putting them all together, what were your grades like last year?’’ Responses ranged from 1 ¼ very poor to 6 ¼ very good. School discipline was computed as the average of four standardized items from the teen survey, including ‘‘In the past year, how often have you been sent out of the classroom for doing something wrong?’’ (a ¼ .88). These items did not ask about police involvement in school discipline, although it is possible that some incidences of school discipline may have led to police contact. Community/neighborhood resources and cohesion was measured using 10 items from the parent survey. Item responses were from 1 to 5, indicting how accurate the description or how frequent the activity.2 High scores indicate positive neighborhoods. Items include ‘‘How often do your neighbors visit each other’s homes’’ and descriptors such as ‘‘nice parks and playgrounds’’ and ‘‘crime’’ (a ¼ .74). Neighborhood environment was assessed using the average of 9 items from the teen survey. All items were measured on a 4-point scale (YES, yes, no, NO), coded so high scores indicate safer, less deviant neighborhoods. Items included ‘‘If a kid carried a handgun in your neighborhood, would he or she get caught by the police?’’ and ‘‘ Do you feel safe in your neighborhood?’’ (a ¼ .79). Teen report of deviant adult network was computed as the mean of four items (a ¼ .86) measured on a 5-point scale. The items were, ‘‘About how many adults (over 21) do you know personally who have . . . in the past year?’’ The deviant behaviors were: used marijuana, crack, cocaine, or other drugs; Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 Crutchfield et al. 191 Table 2. Odds Ratios for Logistic Regressions Predicting Self-Report Police Contact by Eighth Grade Predictor Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6 Step 7 Property crime Violent crime Race Gender Age Per capita income Single parent Parent juv. del. Sibling crime Family conflict Obs. reward positive behavior Obs. reward negative/problem behavior Delinquent peers Grades School discipline Parent neighborhood Teen neighborhood Deviant adult network Adj.a pseudo R2 2.70* 2.44** 2.03* 2.14* 2.20 2.29 2.26 1.97* 1.93* 0.51* 0.46* 1.49 1.52 1.15 1.04 1.04 1.12 1.34* 4.22** a 1.66 2.15 1.95* 0.43** 1.38 1.05 1.05 1.32* 4.26** 1.48 0.81 1.45 1.92 2.32* 0.43** 1.36 1.03 0.98 1.32* 4.47** 1.40 0.76 1.37 1.56 1.51 0.60 1.40 1.01 0.80 1.24 3.65** 1.20 0.85 1.10 1.14 1.40 0.50* 1.19 1.13 0.83 1.17 3.75** 1.22 0.82 2.72** 2.62** 2.31** 2.65** 2.58* .07 .10 .15 .20 .31 2.05 1.50 0.80 0.78 2.18** 1.94** 0.77 0.79 1.65** .35 .41 2 Adjusted pseudo R are based on models without imputed data. *p < .05. **p < .01. sold or dealt drugs; gotten drunk or high; and done other things that could get them in trouble with the police, like stealing, selling stolen goods, mugging, assaulting others, and so on. Analysis Preliminary analyses included chi square and t tests to examine simple race differences in police contacts, and the 18 predictors from six domains (self-reported crime, demographics, family, peer, school, and community). Logistic regression analyses were conducted to determine the unique contribution of predictors to the probability of reporting a police contact at any time before the eighth-grade survey was conducted. Predictors were entered in blocks to reduce the number of separate models to be tested and to examine the effects of predictors within a domain simultaneously. Seven models were tested (see Table 2) in a hierarchical fashion. The order in which we added predictors was based on our specific questions. First we wanted to know if there were race differences in the likelihood of police contacts after controlling for criminal involvement based on self-report. We added demographic variables in the next step because they were least likely to be influenced by having had a police contact and were therefore most exogenous to the outcome. The rest of the predictors Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 192 Race and Justice 2(3) were added starting with the environments most proximal to the individual and working out to the least proximal. Teens originate and live their lives in families first, then eventually have some choice about their peers. Schools and communities/neighborhoods are typically not directly chosen by teens, but are to some extent chosen by their parents. Step 1 included the teen’s self-report of criminal activity (property and violent crimes separately) as well as race predicting police contacts. Step 2 included selfreported criminal activity, race, and demographic variables (gender, age, per capita income, and single-parent household). In order to determine if variability in other domains accounts for race differences, predictors were added in successive steps in this order: parent and sibling criminal activity, family interactions, delinquent peers, school/grades, and community context. Although it is not possible to calculate a true R2 for logistic regression models, a measure of the variance explained by the model can be calculated using the likelihood ratio index (pseudo R2), comparing the log likelihood of the intercept-only model to that of the model including predictors and then adjusting for the number of predictors in the model. To examine whether predictors of police contacts were different for African American and European American teens, we tested the interactions of each predictor by race in separate models. The clustering of families within schools was addressed using SAS GENMOD (Liang & Zeger, 1986; SAS Institute, 2002). Missing data were imputed (Schafer & Graham, 2002). Missing data ranged from 0% to 4% across variables, with slightly less than 19% missing across variables. Forty imputations were calculated and appropriate standard errors were computed using MIANALYZE (SAS Institute, 2002). Models reported in Table 2 used multiple imputations. However, because adjusted pseudo R2 is only an approximation of variance explained by the model and has not been validated for estimation across multiple imputed data sets, pseudo R2 was calculated using only those participants with complete data. Results Means and standard deviations are presented by race and for the total sample in Table 1. African American teens are almost twice as likely as Whites to report having had a police contact (40% vs. 21%, w2 ¼ 13.41, p ¼ .0003). Significant race differences were evident for 10 of the 18 predictors. African Americans reported more property crime (t ¼ 5.26, p ¼ .02), but not more violent crime than White teens. As reported above, African American families had lower income and were more likely to have single parents than White families. No race differences were apparent in parentreported juvenile delinquency. African American teens were no more or less likely to report sibling criminal behavior than Whites. Family conflict was higher (t ¼ 16.37, p < .0001), and observed rewards for positive behavior were lower (t ¼ 19.54, p < .0001) among Blacks than Whites. No race differences were evident for rewards for negative/problem behavior. Blacks in the sample had fewer delinquent peers than Whites (11% vs. 19%, w2 ¼ 13.41, p ¼ 3.90, p ¼ .05). African Americans reported lower grades and more school disciplinary events (t ¼ 32.85, p < .0001; t ¼ 41.37, p < .0001) than White teens. Although parent reports of neighborhood Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 Crutchfield et al. 193 resources and cohesion were not different, African American teens did report less positive neighborhoods than Whites (t ¼ 6.67, p ¼ .01), and reported more adults in their network with recent deviant behavior (t ¼ 28.88, p < .001). Odds ratios (OR) are presented in Table 2. Self-reported property crime and violent criminal activity did significantly increase the probability of ever having a police contact in Step 1 (OR ¼ 2.70 and 2.14, respectively). After controlling for self-reported criminal activity and race in Step 2, Black teens were more than twice as likely to have a police contact as White teens. Girls were half as likely to report a police contact as boys (OR ¼ .54). In Step 3, parent juvenile delinquency increased police contacts by about a third (OR ¼ 1.34), but sibling criminal activity increased the likelihood of police contact by over 4 times (OR ¼ 4.22). Race differences were significant after controlling for family criminal activity. In Step 4, higher levels of observed parent rewards for negative behavior were significantly associated with police contacts (OR ¼ 2.72), while family conflict and observed parent rewards for positive behavior were not. In this step, selfreported criminal activity was not significantly predictive; however, race differences were. In Step 5, associating with at least one close friend who broke the law more than doubled the risk of police contact (OR ¼ 2.58), and this effect was statistically significant before school and broader environmental factors were included. School factors were added in Step 6. Teen reports of school disciplinary contacts significantly increased the likelihood of police contacts (OR ¼ 2.18), but grades did not. In this step, race differences were not significant. In the last model (Step 7), community contextual measures were added. Teen and parent reports of neighborhood quality and cohesion were not related to police contacts. However, teen reports of knowing adults who drank, got high, or committed crimes in the past 12 months were significant. Knowing adults who exhibit these deviant behaviors significantly increased the likelihood of police contacts (OR ¼ 1.65). Pseudo R2 statistics for these models should be interpreted with some caution. There are no statistical tests for the incremental change or differences between nested models. Furthermore, they have been calculated without addressing missing data and are therefore based on subsamples of the original 331. Adjusted pseudo R2 increases from 3% to 11% with the addition of predictors from each domain. The last model, including 18 predictors, explains just 41% of the variability in the risk of a police contact. Tests of interactions between race and each predictor separately produced two statistically significant interactions: neighborhood quality (p ¼ .04) and academic performance (p ¼ .04). More cohesive, safe, resourced neighborhoods significantly reduced the probability of police contact for Blacks (p ¼ .04), but not for Whites (p ¼ .39). Higher grades reduced the probability of police contact for Whites (p ¼ .03), but not for Blacks (p ¼ .43). Discussion We examined several social environments that influence the likelihood of police contact, although not all of them accounted for racial disparities. Interestingly, low Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 194 Race and Justice 2(3) income and single-parent household were not significant predictors. But we did find that family patterns contributed strongly to police contacts. Having parents who have a history of involvement in juvenile crime increased the odds of police contact by about one third. Parents who were delinquent in their youth are perhaps more tolerant of similar behavior in their children and view this behavior as just normal teenage activity that their children will grow out of. Youth with a sibling involved in criminal activity were also more likely to have police contact. We suspect this may be in part due to police knowing the older siblings and being aware of the household. We did not examine if these families are, in the words of Anderson (1999), ‘‘street families,’’ if the police had such a conception of them or other views of them, but these results are consistent with what would be expected if police were aware that parents, brothers, and sisters have been in trouble. In addition, families were important because of observable behaviors between parents and teens in which parents encouraged or failed to discourage negative behavior. This finding points to the importance of parenting practices—or the practice of everyday parenting—in which parents have the opportunity to influence their children in both positive and negative ways. In video observations, we observed things like parents laughing or teasing about the child’s misbehavior or ignoring deviant behaviors such as fighting. For example, if a parent talked about doing something fun together when their child was suspended from school it was coded as a reward for negative behavior. Although this is not the main thrust of this research, we note that the effect of parent’s own juvenile delinquency is no longer significant when observed rewards for negative behavior are included. This is consistent with the notion that parents with a history of delinquency are more tolerant of their children’s problem behaviors, which in turn increases the likelihood of a police contact. Other family predictors, conflict, and observed rewards for positive behavior were not predictive of police contacts. This finding is consistent with families socializing children in a counternormative direction, exposing their offspring to increased scrutiny from law enforcement. Turning to the two environments that are central to our analyses, school and community, we found that the relationship between grades and police contacts was significant for White teens, but not for Blacks, suggesting that high academic performance, although important in other ways, does not protect Black teens from early contacts with law enforcement. Self-reported school discipline (including suspensions) was higher for Blacks than for Whites and accounts for racial differences in eighth-grade police contacts. During the time of the study, schools in Seattle had programs that linked police officers to middle schools. This practice is consistent with community policing as described by Garland (2001), which we expected might lead to greater risks for African American youths. Even though Seattle Public Schools’ policy stated that officers were not to participate in school discipline, one cannot but help but speculate that these data may be reflecting police involvement in student disciplinary actions. Some officers may have believed that by intervening early they would decrease the likelihood of future police contacts and arrests. But, analyses by Hirschfield (2009) and Sweeten (2006), which find that arrest and involvement with the Downloaded from raj.sagepub.com at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on August 5, 2014 Crutchfield et al. 195 juvenile justice system increases school dropout should give these officers pause. In general, there is reason to believe that further criminalizing school infractions will not only have deleterious effects on future behavior, but also on school performance (Thompson, 2011). Of course, it is also possible that youth with a police contact are the ones who are more likely to act out in school, which is not illegal, but can lead to more frequent and serious responses from school authorities. These cross-sectional data do not allow for a clear causal interpretation. Finally, teen reports of neighborhood quality were not predictive of police contacts; however, parent report of resources and cohesiveness were, but only for Black teens. Parent’s views of the neighborhood may be more objective and reliable. Cohesion and resources are related to crime rates, and poorer neighborhoods have a higher police presence, increasing the chances of contacts for Black teens. The same may not hold for Whites. Black teens may also live in a wider range of neighborhoods, with the poorest Blacks in poorer neighborhoods than poor Whites. If this is true, the relationship between neighborhood quality and police contacts may be stronger when comparing poor to moderate neighborhoods than when comparing moderate to highquality ones. Juveniles’ rep...
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