Build and Broaden 2.0: Understanding Barriers to Equity in Public Safety Policies

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。这项拟议的研究的目标是对当前公共安全政策中公平的障碍获得新的见解。拟议的研究采用混合方法，以更好地了解心理特征及其与公共安全政策变化的关系，以期实现更大程度的公平。在公共安全的几乎所有方面都存在差异，包括接触社区暴力、紧急反应时间和调度、总体执法、起诉和定罪率、审前拘留、保释和保释金水平以及量刑。这项研究将采用混合方法，重点关注似乎从不平等中受益的人群，以及他们接受新政策和做法的障碍。这一点很重要，因为它背离了大多数调查，后者倾向于通过以痛苦为中心而不是不平等的研究来病理性地对待边缘化的社区，而很少关注潜在的来源。该项目将采用三阶段研究方法。第一阶段将利用最近通过的州一级公共安全政策的一系列政策变化，探索预测反对公共安全政策和资金变化的特征(例如，价值观、年龄、种族、个性和态度)，涉及五个变化领域。第二阶段将更仔细地研究不同的州居民群体之间的价值观、态度、特征和对变革的抵制之间的关系，以便更好地了解各分群体之间重叠和独特的变革障碍。第三阶段将包括对前两个阶段的调查参与者进行定性访谈，以确定最能解释对这些政策变化的支持和抵制的理论。因此，这项关于通过政策变化减少不平等的障碍的研究可能会增加对在全国实现公共安全公平的障碍的理解。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). The goal of the proposed research is to gain new insights into current barriers to equity in public safety policy. The proposed research employs mixed-method approaches to better understand psychological characteristics and their relation to changes in public safety policy aimed at greater levels of equity. Disparities are present in virtually all aspects of public safety, including exposure to neighborhood violence, emergency response times and dispatch, overall enforcement, prosecution and conviction rate, pretrial detention bail and bond levels, and sentencing. This study will employ mixed-method approaches focused on the population of people who appear to benefit from inequity, as well as the barriers to their acceptance of new policies and practices. This is important because it deviates from most inquiry, which tends to pathologize marginalized communities through research that centers suffering as opposed to inequity, with little attention given to potential sources. The project will use a three-phased research approach. Phase 1 will explore the characteristics (e.g., values, age, race, personality, and attitudes) that predict opposition to changes in public safety policies and funding, across five areas of change, using a recently passed series of policy changes in state-level public safety policy. Phase 2 will take a closer look at the relationships between values, attitudes, characteristics and resistance to change among distinct groups of state residents in order to better understand overlapping and unique barriers to change across subgroups. Phase 3 will consist of qualitative interviews with a subset of survey participants from the first two phases to identify the theories that best explain support for and resistance to these policy changes. Therefore, this study of the barriers to reducing inequities through policy changes may increase understanding of barriers to attaining public-safety equity nationally.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.