A Nationwide Study of the Creation and Expansion of Alternatives to Police

• In Event: Community-Based Programs and Interventions

Abstract

In recent years, there has been rapid growth in the creation of policing alternatives in U.S. cities, especially since the 2020 protests against police violence. In particular, new public safety programs have been established in two areas: non-police crisis response programs for mental health crises and substance use and community violence intervention programs (Offices of Violence Prevention). This paper assembles several novel datasets on over 300 cities to present the first comprehensive nationwide study of the formation of alternatives to police, assessing the factors and characteristics associated with their expansion in U.S. cities. Understanding why some cities may have created alternatives while others haven’t contributes to knowledge about criminal justice policy innovation and diffusion, in other words, why certain ideas and policies grow and spread to better comprehend the networks (policy learning communities), actors (interest groups like police unions), events (local police killings and protests), and characteristics (civic capacity, political ID, fiscal spending) that inform policy creation and learning within and across cities.

Author

• Aaron Stagoff, University of Chicago