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Policing America's Children: Police Contact and Consequences Among Teens in Fragile Families

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  • Amanda Geller

    (New York University)

Abstract

Recent high-profile incidents of police violence and misconduct have brought widespread attention to long-standing tensions between police departments and the communities they serve. Policy shifts over the past 20 years have led to the broad adoption of "proactive" policing, which emphasizes active engagement of citizens at low levels of suspicion. Police use investigative stops, citations, and arrests to detect and disrupt low-level disorder or other circumstances interpreted as indicia that crime is afoot. However, these encounters rarely uncover illegal activity, and in many cities are characterized by stark racial disparities. Such encounters threaten the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities targeted. Due largely to data constraints, little is known about the experiences of youth stopped by the police, and the current national picture of policing and its implications for youth is unclear. I use new data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Survey (FFCWS) to measure the extent, nature, and health implications of police contact among a cohort of contemporary urban teenagers. I find that FFCWS teens have extensive police exposure: more than 75% report a police officer stationed at their school, and more than 25% report personal experience with the police. This contact is racially disparate, and often severe. Observed racial disparities in both a binary indicator of stop experience and a measure of police intrusion are robust to controls for adolescent behavior and their peer context. Further, I find that adolescents' experiences with the police are significantly associated with multiple indicators of adverse mental health, suggesting that police contact has the potential to drive or exacerbate health disparities among urban teens.

Suggested Citation

  • Amanda Geller, 2017. "Policing America's Children: Police Contact and Consequences Among Teens in Fragile Families," Working Papers wp18-02-ff, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    • Handle: RePEc:pri:crcwel:wp18-02-ff
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    File URL: https://fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/sites/fragilefamilies/files/wp18-02-ff.pdf
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    Cited by:

    1. Juan Del Toro & Alvin Thomas & Ming-Te Wang & Diane Hughes, 2019. "The Health-Related Consequences to Police Stops as Pathways to Risks in Academic Performance for Urban Adolescents," Working Papers wp19-09-ff, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    2. Vesla M Weaver & Amanda Geller, 2019. "Transforming Police Surveillance of Kids to the Civic Incorporation of Youth," Working Papers wp19-08-ff, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    3. Jackson, Dylan B. & Testa, Alexander & Vaughn, Michael G., 2020. "Low self-control and the adolescent police stop: Intrusiveness, emotional response, and psychological well-being," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

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