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Research Summary: Following high‐profile police killings, many U.S. cities banned officers from using chokeholds and other neck restraints. The evidence for such bans, however, is limited. To test whether use‐of‐force policies prohibiting neck restraints are related to fewer police killings, we use three modeling approaches to analyze 2183 U.S. cities between 2009 and 2021. Police killings were lower in places that adopted neck‐restraint bans and the bans were associated with less crime and fewer assaults on officers, net of controls. Because officer labor unions can affect use‐of‐force policies and the frequency of police killings, we also analyzed them, finding unionization increased the likelihood a city had a neck‐restraint ban and had a null or negative association with police killings. Policy Implications: Adopting a neck‐restraint ban is likely an effective way to reduce deaths due to police use of force with minimal collateral consequences. The bans operate through a diffuse discouragement of many types of lethal force or as a part of an array of use‐of‐force policies. Their direct relationship to asphyxiation deaths remains unclear. Officer unionization is unlikely to change the frequency of police killings, except through its association with stricter use‐of‐force policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What accounts for the steady decline in misdemeanour arrest rates in the United States following their peak in the mid-1990s? This article links the fluctuation in low-level law enforcement to changes in the budget and staffing resources cities devoted to policing. This materialist explanation contrasts with accounts that emphasize policy changes like the adoption of community policing. Dynamic panel regression analyses of 940 municipalities indicate low-level arrest rates declined most in places that reduced their police expenditure and personnel, net of crime and other controls. The adoption of community policing was unrelated to misdemeanour arrests. Findings suggest lawmakers should consider how increasing police budgets or police force sizes will likely be accompanied by increases in misdemeanour arrests and their attendant harms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumption-side theorists of gentrification examine the flow of middle-class White people into previously working-class neighbourhoods and argue that their demand for housing stimulates gentrification. In contrast, production-side theorists emphasise the movement of capital into previously disinvested neighbourhoods and contend that profit-seeking development increases property values and sparks gentrification. Hybrid theorists argue that consumption and production occur simultaneously. This article operationalises arguments made by each approach, and asks: Do gentrifiers precede rising home values or do rising home values precede gentrifiers? To answer this question of sequence, we build a dataset of census and property tax assessment data for 2192 New York City census tracts between 2009 and 2016. Using cross-lagged regression models with tract and year fixed effects, we find neighbourhoods that experienced an increase in White, middle-class residents had related housing price spikes in each of the subsequent two years. A 1% increase in gentrifiers was associated with a subsequent 2.7% increase in property values. However, housing market growth did not predict future increases in gentrifiers. This suggests that consumption leads production during neighbourhood gentrification, and that developers are reactive, not proactive, in their investment decisions. Focusing on the sequence of gentrification's subsidiary elements enables city officials, non-profits and social movements to better anticipate gentrification and develop more targeted policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The racially disparate impacts of the carceral state are well studied, but most of the research has focused on large cities. Are suburban and urban policing similar? One trend suggests suburban policing might be in flux: U.S. suburbs underwent a dramatic demographic shift between 1990 and 2014. Their White populations declined sharply and their poor, non-White, and foreign-born populations all grew. During the same time, broken windows policing, with its aggressive enforcement of low-level quality-of-life crimes, gained popularity. Are suburban police departments adopting broken windows strategies or making racially disproportionate arrests in response to recent racial and economic changes? I use panel data (N = 1,038 suburbs and 50 cities, with eight observations 1990 to 2014) in fixed effects regression models to address these questions. Data are compiled from the Uniform Crime Reporting Program and the Census. Descriptive statistics show that while quality-of-life arrests are down overall, the White–Black disparity in suburban arrests remains extreme, especially in mostly White suburbs. Multivariate models indicate that increases in poor people in a suburb are associated with increases in quality-of-life arrests, while more Hispanic people are associated with fewer arrests. Results suggest that urban and suburban policing dynamics are quite different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on neo-assimilation ideas, we conceptualise the ‘mainstream’ and then find compelling evidence of its expansion in the U.S. in the rising number of individuals who come from mixed minority–majority backgrounds. In terms of the contexts in which they are raised and their social identities and affiliations, on the whole they resemble whites more than they do minorities, and they marry whites at very high rates. Individuals who are partly black are exceptions to some of these patterns. We note an important similarity between this expansion and the one associated with post-World War II assimilation: both are connected with growing diversity of identity and ethnic expression in the mainstream. An equally important difference lies in the more modest magnitude of the current expansion. We close with a series of questions for future research raised by our argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]