NCJ Number
215928
Journal
Gender & Society Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Dated: August 2006 Pages: 531-552
Date Published
August 2006
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This study examined how gender influenced youths’ experiences with the police in their neighborhoods and considered these issues from the perspectives of minority youths themselves.
Abstract
Study findings offer evidence of the gendered nature of policing in urban African-American neighborhoods. The study reported that 33 young men, versus 16 young women, described experiencing police harassment. In addition, young men reported harassment regardless of their participation in delinquency, while more of the young women interviewed reported harassment when they were involved in delinquency. The majority of young men and young women who reported participation in serious delinquency also noted experiences with police harassment. Overall, young men were the disproportionate recipients of aggressive policing tactics, such as stops and searches. Youths characterized such incidents as harassment. While both young men and young women said such incidents were routine, they also distinguished them as gendered. They believed young African-American men were burdened by a presumption of guilt that served as justification for aggressive police behavior. Generally, criminological investigations of minority citizens’ experiences with the police have focused on adults rather than adolescents. In this study, in-depth interviews with African-American youths in a poor urban community were analyzed to investigate how gender shaped their interactions with and perceptions of the police. It compared young women’s and young men’s accounts of their personal experiences with the police, their understanding of neighborhood policing, and their knowledge of police misconduct in their communities. This allows for the examination of how gender intersects with race and place in shaping youths’ expectations of law enforcement and the nature of police/youth interactions. Tables, notes, and references