The Diffusion of Policing Alternatives in U.S. Cities After the George Floyd Protests

• In Event: 40821 - Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13. Placing Politics

Abstract

Why do some cities adopt social movement policy demands while others do not? The murder of George Floyd ignited one of the largest social movement uprisings in U.S. history—the Black Lives Matter protests—sparking a national debate about police reform and public safety governance. This moment provides a critical test case for understanding the forces and conditions that drive policy diffusion in cities. We provide the first systematic analysis of the adoption of policing alternative programs in U.S. cities from 2013 to 2022. We find that their implementation accelerated after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, offering new evidence on the expansion of public safety innovations demanded by protesters throughout this period. Our analysis identifies the structural factors that shape the likelihood of adoption over a decade by examining the influence of consent decree mandates, policy learning communities, and social movement protests against police violence in facilitating the diffusion of policing alternatives. We use a multi-method empirical approach—logistic regression, propensity score matching (PSM), Residual Balancing Weights (RBW), and survival analysis—to analyze the adoption of policing alternatives by U.S. cities. Drawing on theories of policy diffusion and innovation, we uncover new insights into the forces that drive cities to adopt movement-backed policies in highly contentious policy areas during moments of crisis.

Authors

• Aaron Stagoff-Belfort, University of Chicago

• Ángela Zorro Medina, University of Chicago

• Robert Vargas, University of Chicago