Inequalities in Exposure to Firearm Violence by Race, Sex, and Birth Cohort From Childhood to Age 40 Years, 1995-2021.

Importance: The past quarter-century has seen both sharp declines and increases in firearm violence in the United States. Yet, little is known about the age of first exposure to firearm violence and how it may differ by race, sex, and cohort. Objective: To examine race, sex, and cohort differences in exposure to firearm violence in a representative longitudinal study of children who grew up in periods with varying rates of firearm violence in the United States and to examine spatial proximity to firearm violence in adulthood. Design, Setting, and Participants: This population-based representative cohort study included multiple cohorts of children followed-up from 1995 through 2021 in the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). Participants included Black, Hispanic, and White respondents from 4 age cohorts of Chicago, Illinois, residents, with modal birth years of 1981, 1984, 1987, and 1996. Data analyses were conducted from May 2022 to March 2023. Main Outcomes and Measures: Firearm violence exposure, including age when first shot, age when first saw someone shot, and past-year frequency of fatal and nonfatal shootings within 250 m of residence. Results: There were 2418 participants in wave 1 (in the mid-1990s), and they were evenly split by sex, with 1209 males (50.00%) and 1209 females (50.00%). There were 890 Black respondents, 1146 Hispanic respondents, and 382 White respondents. Male respondents were much more likely than female respondents to have been shot (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 4.23; 95% CI, 2.28-7.84), but only moderately more likely to have seen someone shot (aHR, 1.48; 95% CI, 1.27-1.72). Compared with White individuals, Black individuals experienced higher rates of all 3 forms of exposure (been shot: aHR, 3.05; 95% CI, 1.22-7.60; seen someone shot: aHR, 4.69; 95% CI, 3.41-6.46; nearby shootings: adjusted incidence rate ratio [aIRR], 12.40; 95% CI, 6.88-22.35), and Hispanic respondents experienced higher rates of 2 forms of violence exposure (seen someone shot: aHR, 2.59; 95% CI, 1.85-3.62; nearby shootings: aIRR, 3.77; 95% CI, 2.08-6.84). Respondents born in the mid-1990s who grew up amidst large declines in homicide but reached adulthood during city and national spikes in firearm violence in 2016 were less likely to have seen someone shot than those born in the early 1980s who grew up during the peak of homicide in the early 1990s (aHR, 0.49; 95% CI, 0.35-0.69). However, the likelihood of having been shot did not significantly differ between these cohorts (aHR, 0.81; 95% CI, 0.40-1.63). Conclusions and Relevance: In this longitudinal multicohort study of exposure to firearm violence, there were stark differences by race and sex, yet the extent of exposure to violence was not simply the product of these characteristics. These findings on cohort differences suggest changing societal conditions were key factors associated with whether and at what life stage individuals from all race and sex groups were exposed to firearm violence.

Is Police Misconduct Contagious? Non-trivial Null Findings from Dallas, Texas.

Objectives: Understanding if police malfeasance might be "contagious" is vital to identifying efficacious paths to police reform. Accordingly, we investigate whether an officer's propensity to engage in misconduct is associated with her direct, routine interaction with colleagues who have themselves engaged in misbehavior in the past. Methods: Recognizing the importance of analyzing the actual social networks spanning a police force, we use data on collaborative responses to 1,165,136 "911" calls for service by 3475 Dallas Police Department (DPD) officers across 2013 and 2014 to construct daily networks of front-line interaction. And we relate these cooperative networks to reported and formally sanctioned misconduct on the part of the DPD officers during the same time period using repeated-events survival models. Results: Estimates indicate that the risk of a DPD officer engaging in misconduct is not associated with the disciplined misbehavior of her ad hoc, on-the-scene partners. Rather, a greater risk of misconduct is associated with past misbehavior, officer-specific proneness, the neighborhood context of patrol, and, in some cases, officer race, while departmental tenure is a mitigating factor. Conclusions: Our observational findings-based on data from one large police department in the United States-ultimately suggest that actor-based and ecological explanations of police deviance should not be summarily dismissed in favor of accounts emphasizing negative socialization, where our study design also raises the possibility that results are partly driven by unobserved trait-based variation in the situations that officers find themselves in. All in all, interventions focused on individual officers, including the termination of deviant police, may be fruitful for curtailing police misconduct-where early interventions focused on new offenders may be key to avoiding the escalation of deviance.

Cohort Profile: Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and Its Additions (PHDCN+).

The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) began in the mid-1990s, using an accelerated longitudinal design and drawing a representative sample of over 6200 children from a total of seven birth cohorts (ages 0 to 18) living in Chicago. Participants were followed for a second and third wave of data collection ending in 1998 and 2002, respectively. Independent surveys and observations on Chicago neighborhoods were also conducted. In 2012, a random subsample from cohorts 0, 9, 12, and 15 was selected for further follow-up, resulting in 1057 wave 4 interviews. In 2021, a fifth wave was launched to locate and survey wave 4 respondents, resulting in 682 responses. The extension to waves 4 and 5, termed the PHDCN+, is the main focus of this cohort profile. Survey data were collected from many domains including, but not limited to, family relationships, exposure to violence and guns, neighborhood context, self-reported crime, encounters with the police, attitudes toward the law, health, and civic engagement. In addition, official criminal records were collected for 1995-2020. The resulting PHDCN+ data includes five waves of comprehensive survey data, residential histories, neighborhood contextual data, and criminal histories extending over 25 years for four cohorts differing in age by up to 15 years. The research design, measures, key findings from the cohort sequential design, and data access opportunities are discussed.

Do black lives matter to employers? A combined field and natural experiment of racially disparate hiring practices in the wake of protests against police violence and racial oppression.

This study uses an experimental audit design, implemented both before and during the heightened unrest following the murder of George Floyd, to gauge the impact of Black Lives Matter and associated protests against police brutality and anti-Black racism on racially disparate hiring practices. We contrast treatment of fictitious Black and White job applicants in the labor market for service-related job openings, specifically applicants with prior experience as a police officer, firefighter, or code enforcement officer. Results reveal that the White advantage in employer call-backs and requests for an interview receded during the protests and unrest following the killing of George Floyd, even to the point of producing a Black advantage.

Ride-Hailing and Road Traffic Crashes: A Critical Review.

Ride-hailing businesses, including Uber and Lyft, have reshaped road traffic since they first began operating in the United States approximately a decade ago. It follows that ride-hailing may also alter the incidence and distribution of road traffic crash injuries and deaths. The available evidence relating ride-hailing to crashes is critically reviewed in this article. We present a theoretical model that synthesizes the hypothesized mechanisms, and we identify common methodological challenges and suggest priorities for future research. Mixed results have been reported for the overall incidence of road traffic crash injuries and deaths, likely due to heterogeneous impacts on vehicular traffic flow (e.g., increasing the volume of vehicles); on vehicle-, person-, and event-level characteristics (e.g., reducing alcohol-impaired driver crashes); on road-user types (e.g., increasing pedestrian crashes); and on environmental conditions (e.g., reducing crashes most substantially where public transit access is poorest). The lack of a well-developed theory of human mobility and methodological challenges that are common to many ecological studies impede exploration of these sources of moderation. Innovative solutions are required to explicate ride-hailing's heterogeneous impacts, to guide policy that can take advantage of the public health benefits of ride-hailing, and to ensure that research keeps pace with technological advances that continue to reshape road traffic use.

An audit experiment to investigate the "war on cops": a research note.

Objectives: This study examines whether former police officers are stigmatized in the labor market, particularly following social unrest from lethal police violence. Methods: We conduct an experimental audit study, both before and after heightened unrest from police violence. For service-related job openings, we compare the likelihood of getting an affirmative response from a prospective employer to a job application from a fictitious former police officer (the treatment condition) to the response to one of two control conditions: a former firefighter or a former code enforcement officer. Results: We do not find evidence that former police officers are discriminated against in the labor market. This finding holds in periods characterized by relatively little social unrest due to police violence as well as periods of heightened protest activity. Conclusions: At least with respect to the labor market for certain service-related professions, former police officers do not appear tainted by any stigma associated with their prior profession. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11292-021-09458-x.

The implications of ridehailing for risky driving and road accident injuries and fatalities.

The nature of transportation has fundamentally transformed in recent years with the rise of ridehailing providers such as Uber. Yet, few studies have examined whether there is an association between ridehailing and rates of road accident injuries, and virtually all of the existing studies focus on the exceptional case of the United States. In this study, we exploit differences in the timing of the deployment of Uber across Britain to test the association between the advent of Uber's ridehailing services and rates of fatal and non-fatal road accidents. We find that the deployment of Uber in Great Britain is associated with a marginally significant reduction in the number of serious road accident injuries (e.g., fractures and internal injuries), although not the number of serious accidents. Slight injuries (e.g., sprains and bruises) declined outside of London after the rollout of Uber, but increased within London. We do not observe a statistically significant association between Uber and traffic fatalities. One interpretation for the decline in serious road injuries is that Uber may be a substitute form of transportation for risky drivers, including drink-drivers. However, ridehailing is also a substitute for public transit, particularly buses. The increase in the number of cars on the road may explain why slight injuries increased in London following Uber's rollout.

The association between residential relocation and re-incarceration among drug-dependent former prisoners.

AIMS: To assess whether residential relocation to a different geographic area by drug-dependent former prisoners reduced their likelihood of re-incarceration. DESIGN: Non-randomized observational study using Hurricane Katrina as a natural experiment to determine whether residential relocation induced by the hurricane affected the likelihood of re-incarceration among drug-dependent former prisoners. The study used data provided by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. SETTING: New Orleans metropolitan area, Louisiana, USA. CASES: The pre-Katrina cohort comprised individuals released from Louisiana prisons from September 2003 to February 2004 with a history of drug misuse, as determined by the Louisiana Risk/Needs Assessment (n = 796). The post-Katrina cohort comprised prisoners released from a Louisiana prison immediately after the hurricane, from September 2005 to February 2006 (n = 677). MEASUREMENTS: Re-incarceration, the dependent variable, was operationalized as a return to a Louisiana prison for a new criminal conviction or a parole violation within 1 year of prison release. Residential relocation was operationalized as a change in parish of residence from the location immediately prior to imprisonment to the location immediately upon release from prison. FINDINGS: Instrumental variables probit analysis revealed that the probability of re-incarceration was 0.10 lower for individuals who relocated to a new parish upon their exit from prison relative to individuals who returned to their home parish, with a 95% confidence interval ranging from -0.192 to -0.011. An estimated 10% of parolees who moved were re-incarcerated within 1 year of their release from prison versus 20% of the stayers. CONCLUSIONS: Residential relocation of drug-dependent former prisoners in Louisiana as a result of Hurricane Katrina was associated with reduced likelihood of re-incarceration.

The impact of residential change and housing stability on recidivism: pilot results from the Maryland Opportunities through Vouchers Experiment (MOVE).

OBJECTIVES: This article provides a description and preliminary assessment of the Maryland Opportunities through Vouchers Experiment (MOVE), a randomized housing mobility program for former prisoners designed to test whether residential relocation far away from former neighborhoods, incentivized through the provision of a housing subsidy, can yield reductions in recidivism. METHODS: The MOVE program was implemented as a randomized controlled trial. Participants were recruited from four different Maryland prisons and randomly assigned to experimental groups. In the first iteration of the experiment, treatment group participants received 6 months of free housing away from their home jurisdiction and control group participants received free housing back in their home jurisdiction. In the second iteration of the experiment, the treatment group remained the same and the control condition was redesigned to represent the status quo and did not receive free housing. Analyses were conducted of one-year rearrest rates. RESULTS: With respect to reductions in recidivism, pilot results suggest that there is some benefit to moving and a benefit to receiving free housing. Rearrest was lower among the treatment group of movers than the non-movers, and was also lower for non-movers who received free housing versus non-movers who did not receive housing. CONCLUSIONS: To the extent that pilot results can be validated and replicated in a full-scale implementation of the MOVE program, policies that provide greater access to housing assistance for formerly incarcerated individuals may yield substantial public safety benefits, particularly housing opportunities located far away from former neighborhoods.

Silence Speaks: The Relationship between Immigration and the Underreporting of Crime.

Scarce in criminological literature is an exploration of whether crime reporting varies geographically. Yet, there are substantive reasons to believe not only that the percentage of crimes reported to the police varies across jurisdictions, but also that crime reporting can be explained by ecological characteristics. Drawing upon data from both the National Crime Victimization Survey and the census, this study examines the relationship between immigration and the likelihood that crimes are reported to the police. Results indicate that crime reporting is inversely related to increases in the rates of noncitizens and foreign-born residents within a metropolitan area, and that the negative effect is greater for violence than for property crime. Implications for policing and public safety are discussed.

Uber and Metropolitan Traffic Fatalities in the United States.

Uber and similar rideshare services are rapidly dispersing in cities across the United States and beyond. Given the convenience and low cost, Uber has been characterized as a potential countermeasure for reducing the estimated 121 million episodes of drunk driving and the 10,000 resulting traffic fatalities that occur annually in the United States. We exploited differences in the timing of the deployment of Uber in US metropolitan counties from 2005 to 2014 to test the association between the availability of Uber's rideshare services and total, drunk driving-related, and weekend- and holiday-specific traffic fatalities in the 100 most populated metropolitan areas in the United States using negative binomial and Poisson regression models. We found that the deployment of Uber services in a given metropolitan county had no association with the number of subsequent traffic fatalities, whether measured in aggregate or specific to drunk-driving fatalities or fatalities during weekends and holidays.

A natural experiment of the consequences of concentrating former prisoners in the same neighborhoods.

More than 600,000 prisoners are released from incarceration each year in the United States, and most end up residing in metropolitan areas, clustered within a select few neighborhoods. Likely consequences of this concentration of returning prisoners include higher rates of subsequent crime and recidivism. In fact, one-half of released prisoners return to prison within only 3 y of release. The routine exposure to criminogenic influences and criminal opportunities portends a bleak future for individuals who reside in neighborhoods with numerous other ex-prisoners. Through a natural experiment focused on post-Hurricane Katrina Louisiana, I examine a counterfactual scenario: If instead of concentrating ex-prisoners in geographic space, what would happen to recidivism rates if ex-prisoners were dispersed across space? Findings reveal that a decrease in the concentration of parolees in a neighborhood leads to a significant decrease in the reincarceration rate of former prisoners.

Juvenile Arrest and Collateral Educational Damage in the Transition to Adulthood.

Official sanctioning of students by the criminal justice system is a long-hypothesized source of educational disadvantage, but its explanatory status remains unresolved. Few studies of the educational consequences of a criminal record account for alternative explanations such as low self-control, lack of parental supervision, deviant peers, and neighborhood disadvantage. Moreover, virtually no research on the effect of a criminal record has examined the "black box" of mediating mechanisms or the consequence of arrest for postsecondary educational attainment. Analyzing longitudinal data with multiple and independent assessments of theoretically relevant domains, this paper estimates the direct effect of arrest on later high school dropout and college enrollment for adolescents with otherwise equivalent neighborhood, school, family, peer, and individual characteristics as well as similar frequency of criminal offending. We present evidence that arrest has a substantively large and robust impact on dropping out of high school among Chicago public school students. We also find a significant gap in four-year college enrollment between arrested and otherwise similar youth without a criminal record. We assess intervening mechanisms hypothesized to explain the process by which arrest disrupts the schooling process, and, in turn, produces collateral educational damage. The results imply that institutional responses and disruptions in students' educational trajectories, rather than social psychological factors, are responsible for the arrest-education link.

Cultural mechanisms and the persistence of neighborhood violence.

Sociologists have given considerable attention to identifying the neighborhood-level social-interactional mechanisms that influence outcomes such as crime, educational attainment, and health. Yet, cultural mechanisms are often overlooked in quantitative studies of neighborhood effects. This paper adds a cultural dimension to neighborhood effects research by exploring the consequences of legal cynicism. Legal cynicism refers to a cultural frame in which people perceive the law as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill equipped to ensure public safety. The authors find that legal cynicism explains why homicide persisted in certain Chicago neighborhoods during the 1990s despite declines in poverty and declines in violence city-wide.

The neighborhood context of racial and ethnic disparities in arrest.

This study assesses the role of social context in explaining racial and ethnic disparities in arrest, with afocus on how distinct neighborhood contexts in which different racial and ethnic groups reside explain variations in criminal outcomes. To do so, I utilize a multilevel, longitudinal research design, combining individual-level data with contextual data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). Findings reveal that black youths face multiple layers of disadvantage relative to other racial and ethnic groups, and these layers work to create differences in arrest. At the family level, results show that disadvantages in the form of unstable family structures explain much of the disparities in arrest across race and ethnicity. At the neighborhood level, black youths tend to reside in areas with both significantly higher levels of concentrated poverty than other youths as well as lower levels of collective efficacy than white youths. Variations in neighborhood tolerance of deviance across groups explain little of the arrest disparities, yet tolerance of deviance does influence the frequency with which a crime ultimately ends in an arrest. Even after accounting for relevant demographic, family, and neighborhood-level predictors, substantial residual arrest differences remain between black youths and youths of other racial and ethnic groups.