Segregation and “Out-of-Placeness”: The Direct Effect of Neighborhood Racial Composition on Police Stops

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129231171516
• Author: Laura Schenker,David Sylvan,Jean-Louis Arcand,Ravi Bhavnani
• Date: 01 December 2023

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2023, Vol. 76(4) 1646–1660

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/10659129231171516

journals.sagepub.com/home/prq

Segregation and “Out-of-Placeness”: The

Direct Effect of Neighborhood Racial

Composition on Police Stops

Laura Schenker

1

, David Sylvan

1

, Jean-Louis Arcand

2

, and Ravi Bhavnani

1



Abstract

Differential police conduct may be attributed both to residential racial segregation and more general discriminatory

attitudes and policies. We draw upon ethnographic and other studies of everyday policing to propose that police, in the

context of racially segregated neighborhoods, intensively surveil individuals who are “out of place”in terms of their race

and the local geographical context in which they are found. We then use statistical evidence from the New York City

Police Department to compare stops in different neighborhoods. We f‌ind that the NYPD indeed carries out “stops”that

differentially target African Americans and Hispanics present in predominantly white precincts, with the degree of

surveillance increasing as precincts become more white, and as stops become more generic and less about specif‌ic,

identif‌iable crimes.

Keywords

segregation, policing, race, place

Over the last two decades, political scientists have studied

the racially skewed way in which laws are enforced and

public policies administered. A recurring f‌inding is that

policing varies considerably depending on the race of the

person interacted with: individuals identif‌ied as minority

are more likely to be stopped, arrested, or even die as a

result of an encounter with police off‌icers (Baumgartner

et al. 2021;Knox, Lowe, and Mummolo 2020;Shoub

2022). Nor is this simply a U.S.-specif‌ic phenomenon:

around the world, police encounters covary with racial or

ethnic status.

1

One explanation is that police off‌icers

harbor and act on racial stereotypes (Goncalves and Mello

2021;Shoub, Stauffer, and Song 2021).

However, many jurisdictions marked by racially dif-

ferential policing are also marked by residential segre-

gation along racial lines. Examples are rife, from

“sundown”towns in the Jim Crow South to African-

American professors being arrested while entering their

own homes in predominantly white suburbs (Heussler

2010;Loewen 2018). Institutionalist studies (Alexander

2010;Katznelson 2013;Rothstein 2017; cf. King and

Smith 2005) indicate that this segregation was under-

pinned by racially biased legislators, state administrators,

and private lenders. It is therefore tempting to see the

connection between segregation and differential policing

as indirect, with racial prejudice underlying both phe-

nomena. Such a view, though, is at odds with literature on

how segregation both mediates prejudice and has multiple

direct consequences through the daily interactions it fa-

cilitates, or the access to resources it impedes (e.g., Do,

Locklar, and Florsheim 2019;Isik et al. 2018;Peterson

and Krivo 1993). This suggests that both racial prejudice

and residential segregation may have direct effects on

racially differential policing. To explore this possibility,

we present statistical evidence from a specif‌ic jurisdiction

in support of that claim. Notably, we f‌ind that New York

City police carry out intrusive surveillance, namely

1

Department of International Relations/Political Science, Graduate

Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva,

Switzerland

2

FERDI, Clermont Ferrand, France; Global Development Network, New

Delhi, India; The Department of Economics, Graduate Institute of

International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland, UM6P,

Rabat, Morocco

Corresponding Author:

Laura Schenker, Department of International Relations/Political

Science, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies,

Chemin Eugène-Rigot 2, 1202 Genève, Geneva 1211, Switzerland.

Email: laura.schenker@graduateinstitute.ch