Racial Disparities in the Enforcement of COVID-19 Public Health Violations

• In Event: Theories of Conflict, Oppression, and Inequality

Abstract

Purpose: To curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, most cities and states implemented COVID-19 public health restrictions. As COVID-19 public health violations became enforceable offenses, certain agencies, such as the police, were tasked with enforcing this new crime. Unfortunately, concerns about unequitable enforcement arose among minority and impoverished communities. The current study uses official data from San Antonio, Texas to investigate the impact of zip code racial and ethnic composition and income on the enforcement of COVID-19 public health violations.

Design: Over 28,000 enforcement activities from March 2020 through March 2021 were analyzed using random effects logistic regression to control the clustering effects of enforcement activities within the same zip code.

Findings: The results indicate that enforcement activities occurring in zip codes with above average percent Black and above average percent Hispanic were more likely to receive citations, even though citations were issued in less than one percent of all enforcement activities. However, there were no consistent disparities for warnings or proactive inspections.

Conclusion: Our results fit squarely within the larger work on disproportionate minority confinement and lend support to further studying enforcement decisions at the local level, particularly the new crime of COVID-19 public health violations.

Authors

• Elizabeth Gloyd, Southern Arkansas University

• Wanda Leal, Sam Houston State University

• Alex R. Piquero, U.S. Department of Justice

• Nicole Leeper Piquero, University of Miami