Does proximity to service providers impact punitivity in stop outcomes for individuals experiencing homelessness?

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to examine whether there is a relationship between the formality of police stop outcomes (e.g., no action v. citation) for stops involving individuals experiencing homelessness and the distance of the stop to service providers. We combine several datasets from the city of San Diego to assess our research question, including: police administrative data from the California Department of Justice, location datasets of food banks, homeless shelters, emergency medical and behavior facilities, and detox centers. Using logistic regressions, we model two outcomes – formality of a stop outcome and noncriminal transportation – with distance to within-city service providers and stop characteristics. We find that as proximity to detox facilities and food banks increases, the likelihood of formal outcomes also increases. Yet, when stops occur farther from emergency housing resources there is a reduction in the likelihood of formal outcomes. As the proximity from food banks increases there is also an increase in the likelihood of noncriminal/caretaking transport. Increasing police accessibility to service providers may reduce the use of formal justice-system outcomes in police encounters with individuals experiencing homelessness, which may also reduce the unintended consequences of entering the justice system for individuals experiencing homelessness.

KEYWORDS:

• Homelessness
• policing
• distance decay
• service providers

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank our four-legged co-authors Merlin, Charlie, Mr. Harley B, and Raven for helping us get through final edits and revisions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In this article, we use the terms ‘individuals experiencing homelessness’ and ‘unhoused individuals’ interchangeably when specifically discussing the population in our study.

2. Neither the Neighborhood Policing Division nor the Homeless Outreach Team responded to calls or emails inquiring about the current approach of the HOT team today.

3. Note that this variable was captured as ‘perceived LGBT’, not LGBTQIA2S+. We use the term LGBT over LGBTQIA2S+ only to stick closely to the terminology used in the data, not as a statement about who should or should not be included in the LGBTQIA2S+ community.

4. We conducted supplemental analyses for Models 1 and 2 to estimate the relationship between stops that occur around San Diego’s city boundaries and our outcome variables. We model these stops with a dummy variable ( = 1 if stop is an edge case). For both models, the added covariate did not change any of the model fit statistics nor did it influence in either size or direction the coefficients of the primary independent variables. The covariate did not reach statistical significance at an alpha level of 0.05 in either model. We also conducted multiple bivariate t-tests to explore the differences in distance to providers between outcomes for the edge cases. These tests suggest that there are nonsignificant differences in distance to providers for these stops near the city boundary. We will discuss this further in the limitations section.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this project comes from the National Science Foundation Sociology Program, Grant [#2051226], “Constructing Race-Specific Driving Patterns to Address Racial Profiling”. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Katharine L. Brown

Katharine L. Brown is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Legal Studies at the University of Mississippi. She specializes in policing, homelessness, and mixed-methodology research designs.

Seth Watts

Seth Watts is a third-year doctoral student at Arizona State University in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and is a graduate research assistant in the Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Bowling Green State University and his Master of Science degree from Arizona State University. His research interests include the police and program evaluation.

Patricia R. Turner

Patricia R. Turner is a doctoral student at the School of Social Work at Arizona State University. She studies the psychosocial etiologies of neurodiversity, and their reciprocal interactions within the social environment. At a microsystem level, she is particularly interested in strengths-based trauma-informed modalities that aim to enhance posttraumatic growth, social, and psychological outcomes for people with psychosis. At the macro-level, she seeks to understand the cultural, geographic, social, and environmental determinants of psychosis onset and other forms of serious mental illnesses.

Danielle Wallace

Danielle Wallace is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on disproportional contact and differential treatment of marginalized populations, such as people of color and individuals with disabilities, by the police. She also examines incarceration, reentry and health, as well as spatial elements of policing and reentry.