Recent reports of police shootings and urban unrest have increased public awareness of the nonwhite experience in communities long plagued by disadvantage and racial inequality. Given current times, there is little research that examines how community residents maintain social ties and trust. Race relations literature finds that support and trust come from "old heads," community residents who have a reputation of respect and serve as mentors. Although traditionally old heads are defined as older, minority males with a history of employment, "redeemed" old heads exist. This research provides in-depth interviews with old heads to better understand the residents who characterize this group but also to illustrate the roles they play in their communities. Our results suggest that old heads engage in, and build up, their communities through three themes: linking people to resources, solving problems, and establishing social ties. Attempts are made to link old heads to research on collective efficacy, which captures community level efforts to advance social cohesion and a willingness to engage in informal social control when combating crime and disorder. We conclude with a discussion of how future research can better incorporate old heads as an aspect of community life.

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Racial disparities in tenure and promotion outcomes are well known in the existing research literature. Scholarship establishes that Black and Brown faculty experience unique challenges when navigating the tenure and promotion process, such as lack of diverse mentorship, biased student/peer evaluations, and disproportionately high service demands. However, the public has entered this discourse due to recent media attention involving the tenure cases of Nikole Hannah-Jones and Cornel West, and this has prompted minoritized faculty nationwide to reflect on the implications of these incidents on their own careers. This study relies on theoretical and conceptual literature to discuss the professional realities Black faculty face on the job. We make the theoretical claim that the racial threat hypothesis can facilitate understanding of how Black faculty pursuing tenure is a political threat to white hegemony in the academy resulting in an increase of social control. We conclude with concrete recommendations on how Black scholars can wield the label of “threat” to successfully navigate the academy.

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This study demonstrates that racially disparate fare evasion citation outcomes are the product of racialized social systems that allow transit police officers to determine the belongingness of Black riders in systems of mass transit. Using citation data from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, we test the impact of race and place attributes on transit officer decisions to allocate punishment for subway fare evasion using mixed effects logistic regression controlling for individual and contextual predictors. Although rider racial identity alone proves statistically irrelevant, Black riders suspected of fare evasion possess an elevated risk for being fined as opposed to merely being warned at stations located within predominately white neighborhoods and as stations increase in ridership. These findings demonstrate how transit police officer discretion challenges Black belongingness on systems of public transportation. Broader implications of this work include the importance of scholarship linking statistical disparities to organizational intent and integrating diverse voices in policing policy development.

Correctional officers are critical members of the prison community. However, scholarship rarely considers how correctional officers contribute to prison outcomes instead largely focusing on importation (individual) and deprivation (organizational) factors related to the incarcerated population. This is also true regarding how scholars and practitioners approach suicide committed by incarcerated people, one of the leading causes of death in US carceral institutions. Using quantitative data from confinement facilities across the United States, this study answers the research question: What is the relationship between prison suicide rates and correctional officer gender? Results show that deprivation factors (variables related to the carceral environment) influence prison suicide. Additionally, gender diversity among correctional officers reduces the rate of prison suicide. Implications for future research and practice and limitations of the study are also discussed.

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