The Unique Experience of Black Women and Girls in Police Contact

• In Event: Youth Surveillance, Mental Health, and Health Disparities among Urban Teens and Young Adults

Abstract

Police violence in the United States, particularly violence against Black men, has gained growing media attention in the last decade. Contributing to this media attention, protests against police brutality have uplifted stories and demonstrated the impact of this violence on Black men and their families. While Black men are overrepresented as victims of fatal police violence and police brutality, their experience is not representative of the entire Black population. Black women and girls are directly and vicariously victimized by police in ways that are similar to Black men and boys, however, they may also experience different mental health effects or different forms of police violence in gender-specific ways, during and following a police encounter. Compared to Black men, attention to these stories of Black women go underreported and, therefore, underrecognized. Using data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFWCS), this project examines the experiences of Black women and girls that have been stopped by the police, including the ways that these police stops and their subsequent mental health effects differ from their non-Black and male counterparts.

Author

• P'trice Jones, University of California, Irvine