Police Stops Among At-Risk Youth: Repercussions for Mental Health.

Some interventions could help to reduce racism and rein in the use of unnecessary force in police work, but the evidence base is still evolving. Some interventions could help to reduce racism and rein in the use of unnecessary force in police work, but the evidence base is still evolving.

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What the data say about police brutality and racial bias — and which reforms might work

Historically, laws and policies to criminalize drug use or possession were rooted in explicit racism, and they continue to wreak havoc on certain racialized communities. We are a group of bioethicists, drug experts, legal scholars, criminal justice researchers, sociologists, psychologists, and other allied professionals who have come together in support of a policy proposal that is evidence-based and ethically recommended. We call for the immediate decriminalization of all so-called recreational drugs and, ultimately, for their timely and appropriate legal regulation. We also call for criminal convictions for nonviolent offenses pertaining to the use or possession of small quantities of such drugs to be expunged, and for those currently serving time for these offenses to be released. In effect, we call for an end to the "war on drugs."

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Racial Justice Requires Ending the War on Drugs.

Theories of stress and strain, which emphasize the concentration of social stressors among vulnerable groups, suggest that police contact—the most common type of criminal justice contact—can have d...

Depressive Symptoms among Adolescents Exposed to Personal and Vicarious Police Contact

The standard account of policy feedback holds that social policy can be self-reinforcing: policies provide resources that promote economic security and well-being, and they also encourage beneficia...

De-Policing America’s Youth: Disrupting Criminal Justice Policy Feedbacks That Distort Power and Derail Prospects:

Proactive policing, the strategic targeting of people or places to prevent crimes, is a well-studied tactic that is ubiquitous in modern law enforcement. A 2017 National Academies of Sciences report reviewed existing literature, entrenched in deterrence theory, and found evidence that proactive policing strategies can reduce crime. The existing literature, however, does not explore what the short and long-term effects of police contact are for young people who are subjected to high rates of contact with law enforcement as a result of proactive policing. Using four waves of longitudinal survey data from a sample of predominantly black and Latino boys in ninth and tenth grades, we find that adolescent boys who are stopped by police report more frequent engagement in delinquent behavior 6, 12, and 18 months later, independent of prior delinquency, a finding that is consistent with labeling and life course theories. We also find that psychological distress partially mediates this relationship, consistent with the often stated, but rarely measured, mechanism for adolescent criminality hypothesized by general strain theory. These findings advance the scientific understanding of crime and adolescent development while also raising policy questions about the efficacy of routine police stops of black and Latino youth. Police stops predict decrements in adolescents' psychological well-being and may unintentionally increase their engagement in criminal behavior.

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Tracey Lloyd

Papers

The criminogenic and psychological effects of police stops on adolescent black and Latino boys