Planning Grant: Assessing African American Perceptions of Criminal Justice (Neighborhood Spatial Association and Local Crime Effects)

这个项目将考察空间关联对美国法律体系中公平感的影响。特别是，该项目将调查受访者所在社区与邻近社区之间不同之处的影响。两个社会经济特征和种族构成相似的社区的居民对法律制度的看法可能不同，因为他们邻近的社区对法律制度的体验不同。该项目通过明确区分邻近和邻近社区的特征，解决了传统法律体系认知分析中的这一差距。主要数据来源将是全国黑人政治研究(NBP)，这是一项针对非裔美国人的全国性调查。NBP提供了关于法律系统和警察对公平的看法的项目，以及受访者的个人-家庭特征和人口普查区域。人口普查区域信息将用于将nbps数据与1990年人口普查摘要文件数据合并，这些数据涉及社区信息，如收入中位数、教育、贫困、人口密度、土地用途、住房占有率、建筑物空置率、租户和业主百分比。此外，该项目还进行了第二次背景分析，考察了犯罪类型对不公正的看法对当地犯罪率和逮捕率的影响。这项研究将扩大对邻近地区对法律制度中不平等和公平观念的影响的理解。该项目还将突出扩大逮捕率在公平感和最终与法律当局合作方面的潜在代价。这项工作的结果应该对几个与社区因素、社区治安、破碎的窗户和生活质量政策有关的重要辩论提供重要参考。最后，该项目将产生两个数据集，其中包含大量社区级别的信息，以及对与政治、宗教和法律有关的问题的态度回答。

This project will examine the influence of spatial associations on perceptions of the fairness in the American legal system. In particular, the project will investigate the effect of dissimilarities between a respondent's community with adjacent neighborhoods. Perception of the legal system may vary among residents of two neighborhoods with similar socioeconomic characteristics and racial composition because the experiences with the legal system differ as a result of their adjacent communities. This project addresses this gap in the conventional analysis of perceptions of the legal system by explicitly incorpo-rating characteristics of adjacent and close-by neighborhoods. The principal data source will be the National Black Politics Study (NBPS), a national survey of African Americans. NBPS provides items on perception of fairness in the legal system and among the police, as well as individual-family characteristics and the census tract of the respondents. The census tract information will be used to merge the NBPS data with 1990 Census Summary File data on neighborhood information, such as median income, education, poverty, population density, land use, housing occupancy, building vacancy, percent renters and owners. In addition, the project conducts a second contextual analysis by examining the impact of local crime and arrest rates by offense type of perceptions of injustice. The research will broaden the understanding of neigh-borhood effects on perceptions of inequality and fairness in the legal system. The project also will highlight potential costs of expanding arrest rates in terms of perceptions of fairness and ultimate cooperation with legal authority. The results from this work should significantly inform several important debates relating to neighborhood factors, community policing, broken windows, and quality of life policies. Finally, the project will produce two data sets with a host of neighborhood level information merged with attitudinal responses to questions relating to politics, religion, and the law.