This article explores selective drug law enforcement practices in a single municipality, San Francisco, where racial disproportionality in drug arrest rates is among the highest in the United States. We situate this work in the vein of recent case-study examinations done in Seattle, Cleveland, and New York to help build a more nuanced picture of how the local geography of policing drugs produces racialized outcomes. Within this, we examine how historically embedded local politics shape the varied styles and structures of policing that result in racially discriminatory enforcement patterns. Our goal is to begin sketching out a robust framework of 'place' as an orientation for examining discretionary local policing practices, especially as they impact marginalized groups and communities of color.
* We would like to thank Malcolm Holmes, Marisa Omori, and Akhila Ananth for their helpful comments on drafts of the manuscript. The authors remain solely responsible for the analyses, interpretations, and opinions presented herein. Aaron Roussell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University, Pullman. One major branch of his research focuses the ways that crime relates to geography, place, and shifting demographics and the implications for social theory and policy. He publishes in the fields of sociology, criminology, and socio-legal studies.Population density and crime 3 Micro-and macro-environment population and the consequences for crime rates AbstractFew studies have explored Louis Wirth's propositions regarding of the independent effects of population size and density due to the conceptual difficulty in distinguishing between them. We directly address this conundrum by conceptualizing these as micro-population density and macro-population density. We propose two novel measures for these constructs: population density exposure to capture micro-density, and a measure of population within a 20 mile radius to capture macro-density. We combine the theoretical insights of Wirth with routine activities theory to posit and find strong nonlinear effects of micro-density on crime rates, as well as the moderating effect of macro-density. We find strong evidence of macro social processes for population size including: 1) its strongest effect occurred for crimes generally between strangers (robberies and motor vehicle thefts); 2) virtually no effect for homicides, a type of crime that often occurs among non-strangers. For micro-density, our findings include: 1) strong curvilinear effects for the three types of property crime; 2) diminishing positive effects for robbery and homicide; and 3) a strikingly different pattern for aggravated assault. The effects for micro-density are stronger than for macro-density, a finding unexplored in the extant literature. We discuss the implications of these results within the context of Wirth's theoretical framework as well as routine activities theory, and suggest ways to extend these findings.Population density and crime 4 Micro-and macro-environment population and the consequences for crime rates
Gangs remain a problem across the country. American Indian communities started to see increased gang activity in the 1990s. Despite this, there is little information on American Indian gangs in the literature. This article provides an overview of the characteristics of American Indian gang members and gangs from a Western American Indian reservation community. Utilizing survey responses from 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, the authors explore the characteristics of American Indian gangs, the members who belong to these groups, and the risk factors that differentiate those individuals who become involved in gangs in tribal communities from youth who do not. This study contributes to the overall understanding of gangs and provides additional knowledge regarding American Indian gangs to help target law enforcement, prevention, and intervention services.
Although there is a vast literature on drug use and addiction, there is little work that addresses the long-term use of drugs within the general population. We take a more contextual look in examining longitudinal drug use patterns over the course of 14 years for a representative sample of young adults in their late teens and early twenties in the United States using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). We use a growth trajectory modelling approach for cocaine and marijuana users to determine general use careers. Using contextual and life-course variables, we then estimate a multinomial logistic regression model to predict group membership. In addition to establishing general use career groups, we ask how well mainstream theories comport with our findings and how the different chemical makeup of cocaine and marijuana influence our findings. We find four general use career groups: (i) high use/late desistance; (ii) peaked use/strong desistance; (iii) low use; and (iv) stable use/gradual desistance. Our results suggest similar careers for users of both drugs, with desistance over time as the rule for all groups. We also find some support for life-course and contextual factors in drug using patterns, but our findings challenge other psychological and criminological theories.
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