Spatio-Temporal Lagged Impacts of Social Structure on Formal Social Control

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

The ecology of policing literature has demonstrated that styles and intensity of policing often vary across spaces, even within jurisdictions covered by the same police department. And much of this variation is attributed to differences in crime types and levels across communities, environmental conditions, institutional norms, and perceived legitimacy. Less understood, however, is whether earlier structural conditions of nearby communities impact the order maintenance policing in adjacent neighborhoods. This study addresses that void by considering whether nearby urban revitalization and increasing structural disadvantage conditions the occurrence of subsequent order maintenance police activity. Study data include 3 years of arrest records from Washington, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department, as well as social structural indicators from the decennial census and American Community Survey. Negative binomial regression models indicate that increases in nearby structural disadvantage as well as gentrification are associated with increased order maintenance activity later, even when controlling for key control measures. This suggests that processes of formal social control are facilitated by localized spillover effects of urban revitalization and socioeconomic disenfranchisement.

Author

• Lallen Johnson, American University