Effects of Stop-and-Frisk Policing on the Educational Outcomes of Undocumented Youth

Integration Department

Project head: Dr. Niklas Harder

How does preventive policing, especially open street policing, affect different social groups? In police work, preventive police checks are used as a deterrent strategy to reduce street crime. It is not yet clear how such controls affect other areas of social life.

Integration research has already documented that deportations and intensive controls of residence status have a negative impact on the school performance of children of immigrant parents. It is unclear whether this is also the case with comparatively more frequent but less specific police checks. If this is the case, working on one normative goal of state action (security) may get in the way of another normative goal of state action (education).

Independent of the potential effect on crime rates, this project is thus concerned with unintended consequences of preventive police work. Specifically, this question is examined using the so-called "Stop-Question-and-Frisk" programme (also known as "Stop and Frisk") of the New York Police Department and student data from 18 campuses of the City University of New York. Due to a special regulation in the state of New York, data on the student's residence congestion is also collected. It can therefore be examined whether the effect of police stops also depends on residence status.

Funding: Russell Sage Foundation (Third-party funding)

Cooperation partner:

Prof. Dr. Joscha Legewie (Harvard University), Prof. Dr. Amy Hsin (City University of New York), Linna Marten (Uppsala University)