Aggressive Policing and the Health of Young Urban Men

Amanda B. Geller, Columbia University
Jeffrey Fagan, Columbia University
Tom Tyler, Yale University

One of the leading strategies for fighting urban crime is the proactive policing model: officers aggressively engaging citizens at low levels of suspicion to detect weapons, drugs, or other criminal activity.. City residents, particularly young men in poor, high-crime, minority neighborhoods, face high levels of aggressive police contact, raising concerns about potential physical and mental health effects, and the associated risks of racial, ethnic, and neighborhood health disparities. We examine police contact and health disparities among young men in New York City, using data from the first wave of an ongoing neighborhood-stratified survey of males aged 18-26 (N=1,200), and administrative data from the NYPD. We present individual and neighborhood-level associations between police contact and several health indicators. We anticipate that health problems are more prevalent among respondents treated aggressively by the police, and that neighborhood-level police activity, perceived legitimacy, and other local characteristics are independently predictive of respondent health.