The Police’s Impact On Public Health

A version of this segment originally aired October 18, 2019.

In the 1980s and 1990s, in the midst of rising crime rates and a nationally waning confidence in policing, law enforcement around the country adopted a different approach to addressing crime. Instead of just reacting to crime when it happened, officers decided they’d try to prevent it from happening in the first place, employing things like “hot spots” policing and “stop and frisk,” or “terry stops.” The strategy is what criminologists call proactive policing, and it’s now become widely used in police departments across the nation, especially in cities. 

Critics and experts debate how effective these tactics are in lowering crime rates. While there’s some evidence that proactive policing does reduce crime, now public health researchers are questioning if the practice—which sometimes results in innocent people being stopped, searched, and detained—comes with other unintended physical and mental health consequences. 

Samuel Walker, emeritus professor of criminology at the University of Nebraska Omaha and an expert in police accountability, reviews what led police departments to adopt a more proactive approach, while medical sociologist Alyasah Ali Sewell explains the physical and mental health impacts of stop-question-and-frisk policing.

Further Reading

• Read a study in the journal Social Science & Medicine about the psychological distress of living under stop-question-and-frisk policing in New York City.
• See a paper on the health effects of invasive police encounters in New York City in the Journal of Urban Health.
• Read a study on the illness associations of police violence and the differential relationships by ethnoracial composition in Sociological Forum. 
• Read a 2018 report by the American Public Health Association that looks at law enforcement violence being addressed as a public health issue.