Long-Term Exposure to Neighborhood Policing and the Racial/Ethnic Gap in High School Graduation

Area of Science:

• Sociology
• Criminology
• Education Policy

Background:

• Growing research on policing's impact on minority youth education.
• Need to understand long-term exposure effects and racial disparities.

Purpose of the Study:

• Examine racial/ethnic disparities in long-term neighborhood policing exposure.
• Assess the effect of this exposure on high school graduation.
• Quantify the potential reduction in ethnoracial graduation gaps through policing equalization.

Main Methods:

• Utilized longitudinal data from New York City public school students (five cohorts).
• Employed novel methods for time-varying treatment effects analysis.
• Applied gap-closing estimands to evaluate counterfactual policing scenarios.

Main Results:

• Significant racial/ethnic disparities exist in long-term neighborhood policing exposure.
• Exposure to neighborhood policing demonstrates negative effects on high school graduation, varying by race/ethnicity.
• Equalizing policing exposure for Black and Latino students to White levels could close Black-White gaps by over 25% and Latino-White gaps by nearly 20%.

Conclusions:

• Cumulative, long-term neighborhood policing exposure has detrimental effects on educational outcomes for minority youth.
• Policing reforms, such as focusing solely on violent crime, show potential for reducing racial disparities in high school graduation.
• Findings offer crucial insights for research and policy aimed at educational equity.