Race and Selective Enforcement in Public Housing

Abstract

Drugs, crime, and public housing are closely linked in policy and politics, and their nexus has animated several intensive drug enforcement programs targeted at public housing residents. In New York City, police systematically conduct “vertical patrols” in public housing buildings, making tens of thousands of Terry stops each year. During these patrols, both uniformed and undercover officers systematically move through the buildings, temporarily detaining and questioning residents and visitors, often at a low threshold of suspicion, and usually alleging trespass to justify the stop. We use a case‐control design to identify the effects of living in one of New York City's 330 public housing developments on the probability of stop, frisk, and arrest from 2004–2011. We find that the incidence rate ratio for trespass stops and arrests is more than two times greater in public housing than in the immediate surrounding neighborhoods. We decompose these effects using first differences models and find that the difference in percent black and Hispanic populations in public housing compared to the surrounding area predicts the disparity in trespass enforcement and enforcement of other criminal law violations. The pattern of racially selective enforcement suggests the potential for systemic violations of the Fourteenth Amendment's prohibition on racial discrimination.

Street Stops and Police Legitimacy: Teachable Moments in Young Urban Men's Legal Socialization

“…This variable was constructed using race, age, education, public housing residence, and criminal justice history. Public housing was singularly important because it has been the locus of intensive police enforcement, and because the patrol tactics in those high‐rise buildings have been conducted in a manner different from patrols in other areas (Fagan et al ; Carlis ). The models included fixed effects for neighborhood and standard errors were clustered by neighborhood.…”

“…One reason for stratifying and oversampling by neighborhood was the fact that there are strong differences in policing by neighborhood and race, especially with respect to proactivity, including stop and frisk activity (Fagan et al ; Geller & Fagan ; Fagan , ). This broader spatial pattern suggests that exposure to policing—specifically, to police stops—varies by race.…”

“…Being questioned by the police is a common occurrence in New York City for hundreds of thousands of residents and visitors, but particularly for young men of color (Fagan , ; Fagan et al. , ). Over the past 20 years, the New York Police Department has engaged in a series of controversial policies and practices in its dealings with the public.…”

“…In many instances, citizens are either stopped or arrested on suspicion of criminal trespass while attempting to enter their own home or to visit family members in those buildings ( Davis v. City of New York ; Ligon v. City of New York ; Carlis ; Fagan et al. ; Toobin ).…”

Banishment

“…Empirical research on banishment in public housing has been scant and has been focused on neighborhood‐level effects and comparisons. In recent studies, researchers have found that banishment increases trespass arrests and drug arrests with modest property crime reductions (Torres, Apkarian, and Hawdon, ), and that trespass enforcement has been concentrated in public housing communities disproportionately populated by racial minorities (Fagan, Davies, and Carlis, ). A few early public housing crime interventions did include banishment (Barbrey, ; McGarrell, Giacomazzi, and Thurman, ; Walsh et al., ), but such policies were part of larger crime reduction strategies within public housing, making it hard for evaluations to decipher the direct impact of no‐trespass policies on crime.…”