Opioid abuse has redefined drug problems in communities and shifted police activities to redress substance use. Changing neighborhood context around opioid issues may affect arrests and racial disparities in their imposition. This study presents a spatial analysis of arrests involving Blacks and Whites for possession of heroin, synthetic narcotics, and opium offenses. We identify the ecological conditions associated with opioid-related arrests using geographically weighted regression (GWR) methods that illuminate local patterns by allowing coefficients to vary across space. GWR models reveal spatial and racial differences in opioid-related possession arrest rates. Calls for police service for overdoses increase White arrests in more advantaged, rural communities. Economic disadvantage and racial diversity in neighborhoods more strongly elevate possession arrest rates among Blacks relative to Whites. Overdose calls predict Black arrests in poorer urban areas. Findings underscore police responsiveness to opioid problems and Black–White differences in how opioid users interact with the criminal justice system.
As opioid addiction has risen in recent years, racial disparities in drug arrests may be changing in their size and sources. Neighborhood conditions, like economic disadvantage and racial composition, are powerful determinants of racial differences in arrests. Overdoses and police responses to these incidents may, however, alter the neighborhood context of drug arrests, especially those tied to heroin, synthetic narcotics, and related opium derivatives offenses. This study revisits the environmental correlates of arrest disparities by conducting a neighborhood-level analysis of Black–White differences in drug possession and selling arrests by substance type across the State of Delaware. Spatial model estimates suggest economic disadvantage and racial diversity in neighborhoods substantially increase Black arrest rates. Conversely, White arrest rates grow with more calls for service for overdose incidents, racial homogeneity, and to a lesser extent, economic disadvantage within a community. Disparities in arrest also vary by substance type, as heroin arrests for Whites are most correlated with higher overdose service calls relative to White arrests for marijuana, cocaine, and other substances or Black arrests for any substance. Results underscore the need to reexamine neighborhood conditions and arrest disparities due to emerging shifts in drug use and drug law enforcement.
As an extra-legal factor, social context is a key contributor to racial/ethnic disparities in incarceration sentences. Neighborhoods may have important, yet underexplored influences on sentencing. This study evaluates whether the social conditions and racial characteristics of communities where defendants allegedly offend affect Black-White sentencing disparities. Three-level multilevel model results suggest larger Black populations in neighborhoods of criminal incident increase the odds of incarceration and, to a lesser extent, lengthen sentences for all defendants. Offending outside one’s residential community increases the probability and length of a prison sentence. Neighbourhood effects differ by race, however. Unlike Whites, Blacks receive more punitive sentences for committing offences in disadvantaged areas and less proportionally Black communities. Neighbourhoods thus contribute to racial differences in sentencing outcomes.
Racial inequalities in criminal justice are pressing problems for policymakers. Prior literature suggests elected officials promulgate punitive, racially disparate criminal justice policies due to partisanship and racial fears, but scholarship has yet to explain how and why elected officials address racial problems in criminal processing. This article introduces the framework of racial disparity reform policymaking. A racial disparity reform is a policy that seeks to reduce distinctions in criminal justice institutions' treatment of racial groups. Elected officials pursue these policies due to ideological beliefs in civil rights ideals and political interests in appearing to solve social problems. Using an original database of policy enactments, this article first presents the distribution and types of reform measures adopted by elected officials in all 50 states between 1998 and 2011. It then examines social and political explanations for when state legislatures and executives adopt racial disparity reforms. Policy enactment is predicted by worsening problems of racial disproportion in criminal processing, Democratic control of elected branches, and the absence of judicial efforts to improve racial fairness within a state's criminal justice system. Similar dynamics encourage the development of different measures types within policies. Such ideological and problem-solving explanations for racial disparity reform show a potential for elected officials to forge more racially just criminal justice practices.
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