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

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.