The U.S. criminal legal system has expanded at a rapid pace, even as crime rates have declined since the 1990s. As a result, individuals’ interactions with and surveillance by law enforcement are now commonplace. But citizens experience different interactions, with people of color who live in impoverished urban communities having the most frequent encounters. A...
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65015356/PoliceKillingProtest.0.jpg "Fatal Police Violence Nearby Increases Risk of Preterm Birth")
Black women have 80% higher risk of preterm birth between 32 and 33 weeks of pregnancy if a Black person who lives in their neighborhood is killed by police during the pregnancy, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley. The study by scientists at the UCSF California Preterm Birth...
The New Jersey State Police, founded 100 years ago, was created to counter the influence of the state’s rising populations of African Americans and immigrants, whom white residents feared. My research into the agency’s culture found that the agency emerged as the result of a seven-year campaign by the state’s Chamber of Commerce to replace...
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19203661/shutterstock_1409935859.jpg "Scoot Over! Study Reveals E-Scooter Use in Washington D.C.")
Electric scooters or “e-scooters” are taking over cities worldwide and have broad appeal with tourists. Although e-scooter use declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, its popularity could rebound rapidly, especially if travelers start to substitute scooters for transit on some shorter trips. Shared e-scooters in particular, are a rapidly emerging mode of transportation, but present a...
Takeaway coffees – they’re a convenient start for millions of people each day, but while the caffeine perks us up, the disposable cups drag us down, with nearly 300 billion ending up in landfill each year. While most coffee drinkers are happy to make a switch to sustainable practices, new research from the University of...
Stress was the most common reason teachers cited for leaving the profession before and during the pandemic, according to a RAND Corporation survey of nearly 1,000 former public-school teachers. Three of four former teachers said work was often or always stressful in the most recent year in which they taught in a public school. In...
Over the last three decades, the United States prison population has exploded from 300,000 to more than 2 million. More than 1.1 million are African American men – the vast number of whom have returned within one to three years of their release. In fact, according to the World Prison Brief, America boasts the highest...
Amid a sharp economic downturn in 2008, police departments around the United States experienced budget shortfalls that required them to enact cutbacks. A new study examined the effects on crime of budget shortfalls in two New Jersey cities–one of which laid off more than 10 percent of its police force while the other averted layoffs....
Historically redlined neighborhoods are more likely to have a paucity of greenspace today compared to other neighborhoods. The study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco, demonstrates the lasting effects of redlining, a racist mortgage appraisal practice of the 1930s that established and...
The World Health Organization reports that as of January 19, 2021, there are approximately 94 million cases of COVID-19 globally, with over 2 million deaths. In the face of these numbers — driven in part by an aggressive resurgence of the virus in the U.S. — health authorities face a tenuous balancing act: how to enact policies...
