Aggressive Policing and the Educational Performance of Minority Youth

Abstract

An increasing number of minority youth experience contact with the criminal justice system. But how does the expansion of police presence in poor urban communities affect educational outcomes? Previous research points at multiple mechanisms with opposing effects. This article presents the first causal evidence of the impact of aggressive policing on minority youths' educational performance. Under Operation Impact, the New York Police Department (NYPD) saturated high-crime areas with additional police officers with the mission to engage in aggressive, order-maintenance policing. To estimate the effect of this policing program, we use administrative data from more than 250,000 adolescents age 9 to 15 and a difference-in-differences approach based on variation in the timing of police surges across neighborhoods. We find that exposure to police surges significantly reduced test scores for African American boys, consistent with their greater exposure to policing. The size of the effect increases with age, but there is no discernible effect for African American girls and Hispanic students. Aggressive policing can thus lower educational performance for some minority groups. These findings provide evidence that the consequences of policing extend into key domains of social life, with implications for the educational trajectories of minority youth and social inequality more broadly.

American Policing and the Danger Imperative

“…As a result, Black Americans continue to disproportionately experience police stops, searches, arrests, and uses of force (Epp et al 2014;Gaston 2019;Kramer and Remster 2018), virtually guaranteeing that those most likely to be perceived as suspicious, violent, and criminal will be those most likely to encounter police primed for threat (Eberhardt et al 2004;Goff et al 2014). In turn, the concentration of police in Black communities contributes to decreased mental and physical health (Sewell and Jefferson 2016;Sugie and Turney 2017), lower educational attainment (Legewie and Fagan 2019), and disengagement from key social institutions and the labor market (Brayne 2014).…”

Policing Gentrification: Stops and Low–Level Arrests during Demographic Change and Real Estate Reinvestment

“…A report by a federal court monitor found police failed to record 30 percent of stops they made in 2015 (Baker ). So, in line with other recent studies, I limit the models of stops to pre‐2013 data (see, e.g., Goel, Rao and Shroff, ; Legewie and Fagan ; Rosenfeld and Fornango ).…”

“…; Geller et al. ; Legewie and Fagan ; National Academies of Sciences ). A single arrest increases the likelihood a juvenile arrestee will reoffend (Liberman et al.…”

“Can I Live”: Black American Adolescent Boys’ Reports of Police Abuse and the Role of Religiosity on Mental Health

“…Additionally, a meta-analysis examining the role of racial identity and academic achievement found a small but significant effect size linking racial identity with academic achievement [91]. Recent research conducted on over 200,000 adolescents in New York City found that aggressive policing reduced test scores for African American boys [92]. Thus, more research is needed investigating the ways police abuse, specifically, is associated with academic achievement and subsequent socioeconomic advancement.…”