Revisiting Neighborhood Context and Racial Disparities in Drug Arrests Under the Opioid Epidemic

2019 ◽  
pp. 215336871987722
Author(s):  
Ellen A. Donnelly ◽  
Jascha Wagner ◽  
Tammy L. Anderson ◽  
Daniel O’Connell
Keyword(s):  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Neighborhood Context ◽  
Economic Disadvantage ◽  
Neighborhood Conditions ◽  
Arrest Rates ◽  
Calls For Service ◽  
Drug Law ◽  
Drug Arrests

As opioid addiction has risen in recent years, racial disparities in drug arrests may be changing in their size and sources. Neighborhood conditions, like economic disadvantage and racial composition, are powerful determinants of racial differences in arrests. Overdoses and police responses to these incidents may, however, alter the neighborhood context of drug arrests, especially those tied to heroin, synthetic narcotics, and related opium derivatives offenses. This study revisits the environmental correlates of arrest disparities by conducting a neighborhood-level analysis of Black–White differences in drug possession and selling arrests by substance type across the State of Delaware. Spatial model estimates suggest economic disadvantage and racial diversity in neighborhoods substantially increase Black arrest rates. Conversely, White arrest rates grow with more calls for service for overdose incidents, racial homogeneity, and to a lesser extent, economic disadvantage within a community. Disparities in arrest also vary by substance type, as heroin arrests for Whites are most correlated with higher overdose service calls relative to White arrests for marijuana, cocaine, and other substances or Black arrests for any substance. Results underscore the need to reexamine neighborhood conditions and arrest disparities due to emerging shifts in drug use and drug law enforcement.

Opioids, Race, and Drug Enforcement: Exploring Local Relationships Between Neighborhood Context and Black–White Opioid-Related Possession Arrests

2020 ◽  
pp. 088740342091141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen A. Donnelly ◽  
Jascha Wagner ◽  
Madeline Stenger ◽  
Hannah G. Cortina ◽  
Daniel J. O’Connell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Neighborhood Context ◽  
Economic Disadvantage ◽  
Arrest Rates ◽  
Local Patterns ◽  
Drug Problems ◽  
Opioid Users

Opioid abuse has redefined drug problems in communities and shifted police activities to redress substance use. Changing neighborhood context around opioid issues may affect arrests and racial disparities in their imposition. This study presents a spatial analysis of arrests involving Blacks and Whites for possession of heroin, synthetic narcotics, and opium offenses. We identify the ecological conditions associated with opioid-related arrests using geographically weighted regression (GWR) methods that illuminate local patterns by allowing coefficients to vary across space. GWR models reveal spatial and racial differences in opioid-related possession arrest rates. Calls for police service for overdoses increase White arrests in more advantaged, rural communities. Economic disadvantage and racial diversity in neighborhoods more strongly elevate possession arrest rates among Blacks relative to Whites. Overdose calls predict Black arrests in poorer urban areas. Findings underscore police responsiveness to opioid problems and Black–White differences in how opioid users interact with the criminal justice system.

Reasonable Suspicion in the Eye of the Beholder: Routine Policing in Racially Different Disadvantaged Neighborhoods

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shytierra Gaston ◽  
Rod K. Brunson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
Neighborhood Context ◽  
Neighborhood Conditions ◽  
Drug Arrests ◽  
Reasonable Suspicion ◽  
White Majority ◽  
Racially Mixed ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Race And Place

This study extends Brunson and Weitzer’s 2009 endeavor to elucidate the influence of race and place in policing by reexamining enforcement practices across disadvantaged urban neighborhoods but from the purview of police. We investigate the impact of race and neighborhood context on officer decision making and routine enforcement practices by analyzing 144 official reports of drug arrests made between 2009 and 2013 in a similarly disadvantaged majority White, majority Black, and racially mixed neighborhood in St. Louis. Our analysis reveals the importance of place and race for helping to shape officers’ decision making and investigation practices. In particular, proactive traffic and pedestrian stops, motivated by officers’ views of criminogenic neighborhood conditions, drove most drug arrests in the three study settings. Enforcement practices differed, however, in the racially mixed neighborhood where proactive encounters were more frequent, capricious, and seemingly driven by race. Our findings have important implications for research and policy.

Neighborhood Income Composition by Household Race and Income, 1990–2009

2015 ◽  
Vol 660 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean F. Reardon ◽  
Lindsay Fox ◽  
Joseph Townsend
Keyword(s):  
Racial Differences ◽  
Residential Segregation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Neighborhood Context ◽  
Neighborhood Conditions ◽  
Income Distributions ◽  
Socioeconomic Segregation ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
A New Technique ◽  
Using Data

Residential segregation, by definition, leads to racial and socioeconomic disparities in neighborhood conditions. These disparities may in turn produce inequality in social and economic opportunities and outcomes. Because racial and socioeconomic segregation are not independent of each other, however, any analysis of their causes, patterns, and effects must rest on an understanding of the joint distribution of race/ethnicity and income among neighborhoods. In this article, we use a new technique to describe the average racial composition and income distributions in the neighborhoods of households with different income levels and race/ethnicity. Using data from the decennial censuses and the American Community Survey, we investigate how patterns of neighborhood context in the United States over the past two decades vary by household race/ethnicity, income, and metropolitan area. We find large and persistent racial differences in neighborhood context, even among households with the same annual income.

scholarly journals Addressing Racial Health Disparities: Looking Back to Point the Way Forward

2018 ◽  
Vol 680 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rucker C. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Health Disparities ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Family Background ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Adult Mortality ◽  
Health Condition ◽  
Racial Health Disparities ◽  
Neighborhood Conditions

This article investigates the influence of family background and neighborhood conditions during childhood on health later in life, with a focus on hypertension. To document the proportion of current adult racial health disparities rooted in early-life factors, I use nationally representative longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) spanning four decades. The results indicate that racial differences in early life neighborhood conditions and family background characteristics play a substantial role in explaining racial disparities in hypertension through at least age 50. Contemporaneous socioeconomic factors account for relatively little of the racial disparities in this health condition in adulthood. Second, I match the PSID data to county-level data on Medicaid expenditures during these cohorts’ childhoods, and provide new causal evidence on the long-run returns to childhood Medicaid spending: Medicaid-induced increases in access to public health insurance led to significant reductions in the likelihood of low birth weight, increased educational attainment and adult income, and reduced adult mortality and the annual incidence of health problems.

Enforcing Race: A Neighborhood-Level Explanation of Black–White Differences in Drug Arrests

2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shytierra Gaston
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Negative Binomial ◽  
Racial Profiling ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
Negative Binomial Regression ◽  
Calls For Service ◽  
Drug Law ◽  
Drug Law Enforcement ◽  
Drug Arrests ◽  
Neighborhood Level

This research investigates the source of Black–White differences in drug arrests by conducting a neighborhood-level test of the differential police scrutiny and racially discriminatory policing hypotheses. The study examines drug arrests made across 78 neighborhoods in St. Louis between 2009 and 2013. Results from the negative binomial regression analyses lend the greatest support to the racially discriminatory policing perspective. Neighborhood racial composition significantly shapes drug law enforcement practices, net of neighborhood-level violent and property crime rates, drug-related calls for service by citizens, and socioeconomic disadvantage. Specifically, findings suggest that officers engage in “out-of-place” racial profiling in drug law enforcement, as they tend to target suspects whose race is incongruent with the neighborhood racial context. Implications of the study findings are discussed.

Neighborhoods and Intimate Partner Violence: A Decade in Review

2021 ◽  
pp. 155708512098763
Author(s):  
Emily M. Wright ◽  
Gillian M. Pinchevsky ◽  
Min Xie
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Partner Violence ◽  
Partner Violence ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Intimate Partner ◽  
Neighborhood Context ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Economic Disadvantage ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
And Gender

We consider the broad developments that have occurred over the past decade regarding our knowledge of how neighborhood context impacts intimate partner violence (IPV). Research has broadened the concept of “context” beyond structural features such as economic disadvantage, and extended into relationships among residents, collective “action” behaviors among residents, cultural and gender norms. Additionally, scholars have considered how the built environment might foster (or regulate) IPV. We now know more about the direct, indirect, and moderating ways that communities impact IPV. We encourage additional focus on the policy implications of the research findings.

Pan cancer analysis of the intra-tumoral microbiome’s correlation with racial disparities.

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. 2519-2519
Author(s):  
Wei Tse Li ◽  
Matthew Uzelac ◽  
Jaideep Chakladar ◽  
Lindsay M. Wong ◽  
Aditi Gnanasekar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bladder Cancer ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Environmental Influence ◽  
Microbial Abundance ◽  
Risk Of Death ◽  
Incidence And Mortality ◽  
Starting Point

2519 Background: Microbiome composition can influence cancer development and is moderated by diet, hygiene, sanitation, and other environmental variables. For example, a Mediterranean diet could increase breast Lactobacillus abundance, while the gut microbiome changes dramatically with fructose intake. Recent studies have revealed correlations between microbial abundance and racial disparities in cancer. Given these reports, it is critical to examine whether environmental influences on the microbiome contribute to racial disparities in cancer incidence and prognosis. Methods: We examined the intra-tumoral microbiome in the lungs, breasts, bladder, colon, rectum, cervix, head and neck, prostate, and pancreas (n = 4,169). Raw tumor RNA sequencing data were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and aligned to bacterial genomes. Microbial abundance was correlated to race, ethnicity, and prognostic variables (Kruskal-Wallis test or Cox regression, p< 0.05). Results: We identified several microbes correlated with racial disparities for breast and bladder cancer, two microbes for lung squamous cell carcinoma, and one microbe for colon cancer. For breast cancer, African Americans have the highest mortality rate, followed by white Americans and Asian Americans. We found that four microbes, all under the order Burkholderiales, were positively correlated with poor prognosis and were most abundant in African Americans and least abundant in Asian Americans. Therefore, increased abundance of these microbes may contribute to the observed mortality differences between races. For bladder cancer, Asian Americans have the lowest incidence and mortality rates. Seven microbes, including two Geobacillus, two Pseudomonas, and two Burkholderiales, positively correlate with good prognosis and are upregulated in Asian Americans. High Pseudomonas fluorescens abundance is positively correlated with decreased risk of death (HR: 0.57, 95% CI: 0.38-0.85). High abundance of the Burkholderiales R. pickettii (HR: 0.62, 95% CI: 0.42-0.92) and V. paradoxus (HR: 0.59, 95% CI: 0.36-0.98) also exhibit the same trend. Geobacillus and Pseudomonas are both present in food, while Burkholderiales can cause nosocomial infections and are altered by diet. Conclusions: Our study is the most comprehensive to date investigating racial differences in the intra-tumoral microbiome. Our data serve as a starting point for exploring whether environmental influence of microbial abundance contributes to racial disparities in cancer.

scholarly journals Factors Underlying Racial Disparities in Sepsis Management

Healthcare ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Matthew DiMeglio ◽  
John Dubensky ◽  
Samuel Schadt ◽  
Rashmika Potdar ◽  
Krzysztof Laudanski
Keyword(s):  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Sepsis Management ◽  
Treatment Protocols ◽  
Common Causes ◽  
Standardized Treatment ◽  
Wide Variability

Sepsis, a syndrome characterized by systemic inflammation during infection, continues to be one of the most common causes of patient mortality in hospitals across the United States. While standardized treatment protocols have been implemented, a wide variability in clinical outcomes persists across racial groups. Specifically, black and Hispanic populations are frequently associated with higher rates of morbidity and mortality in sepsis compared to the white population. While this is often attributed to systemic bias against minority groups, a growing body of literature has found patient, community, and hospital-based factors to be driving racial differences. In this article, we provide a focused review on some of the factors driving racial disparities in sepsis. We also suggest potential interventions aimed at reducing health disparities in the prevention, early identification, and clinical management of sepsis.

scholarly journals Racial demographics explain the link between racial disparities in traffic stops and county-level racial attitudes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierce D. Ekstrom ◽  
Joel Michel Le Forestier ◽  
Calvin K. Lai
Keyword(s):  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
County Level ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Traffic Stops ◽  
Arrest Rates ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Racial Demographics

Disparities in the treatment of Black and White Americans in police stops are pernicious and widespread. We examine racial disparities in police traffic stops by leveraging data on traffic stops from hundreds of U.S. counties from the Stanford Open Policing Project and corresponding county-level data on implicit and explicit racial attitudes from the Project Implicit research website. We find that Black-White traffic stop disparities are associated with county-level implicit and explicit racial attitudes and that this association is attributable to racial demographics: counties with a higher proportion of White residents had larger racial disparities in police traffic stops. We also examined racial disparities in several post-stop outcomes (e.g., arrest rates) and found that they were not systematically related to racial attitudes, despite evidence of disparities. These findings indicate that racial disparities in counties’ traffic stops are reliably linked to counties’ racial attitudes and demographic compositions.

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