policing

Neighborhood Watch programs became popular in the 1970s and 1980s; by 2000, roughly 40% of the U.S. residential population was covered by such citizen crime-watching programs. These neighborhood associations typically involve recruiting residents to participate in community meetings and various surveillance tasks around properties and common areas; a block captain and coordinator may take leadership roles and serve as liaisons to the local police.

The deaths of black men at the hands of white police officers in recent years have raised a number of questions about the treatment of racial minorities within the criminal justice system, as well as about patterns of arrest-related deaths more generally. Some researchers are calling for Congressional-mandated government databases to be more thorough so they can better find patterns in the violent interactions between police and civilians.

Racial profiling and discrimination against African-American youth by police are problems that periodically grab national attention. Yet there is seldom subtle discussion of whether such discrimination is more prevalent in predominantly black or white neighborhoods, or in mixed racial settings. Moreover, data from black adolescents themselves who may face these realities are infrequently collected, analyzed and cited.