Neighborhood Youth, Public Safety, and Police

Background & Purpose: Policing in inner-city communities is receiving much attention, especially around applications of “broken windows” policing tactics. Critics of these tactics argue that they lead police to disproportionately target high-poverty communities of color, which includes the criminalization of young people in those communities. Proponents of broken windows tactics, on the other hand, argue that residents of these communities are disproportionately victimized by criminal activity, and that these policing tactics help to protect those residents. These competing claims also have implications for communities’ social welfare; specifically, there are mental health, life course, and public safety implications. However, the perspectives and experiences of the young people who most directly experience policing are frequently not included in research. This study addresses that research need by engaging with young people in disadvantaged urban communities to address our research question: what are the attitudes towards, experiences with, and actions relating to police and illegal activity of young people who live in and are part of inner-city communities and who are involved in serious lawbreaking?

Methods: Neighborhood-focused ethnographic interviews were conducted with fifteen teenagers and young adults (ages 15-23; 13 male and 2 female) from disadvantaged New York City and Philadelphia neighborhoods who have been involved in lawbreaking activity and the court system. Participants were recruited through three agencies serving justice system-involved youth. Interviews covered a range of topics, including participation in illegal activity, interactions with and attitudes towards the police, and behavior and experiences in the community. Specific analytic strategies include verbatim interview transcription, inductive coding, and analytic memoing.

Results: Analyses reveal these young people to have complex relationships with police and public safety. At times, they contribute to diminished public safety. At other times, they need protection and police assistance. Sometimes, they are in both positions in a single situation. The complexity is further highlighted by the interplay of participants’ attitudes towards police, experiences with police, and actions. Attitudes towards and experiences with the police both range from neutral to negative, and influence participants’ actions in multiple ways.

Conclusions and Implications: The resident-criminal dichotomy is a false one. There are members of inner-city communities who both act in ways that compromise others’ public safety and at times are victimized by the lack of safety in their communities. While their neighbors at times need protection from their actions, these individuals also suffer from victimization by others. Further research is required to corroborate these findings, which point to a need for policies that support more nuanced approaches to policing in high-poverty communities of color.