Concentrated incarceration and the public-housing-to-prison pipeline in New York City neighborhoods
Open accessAbstract
Using public housing developments as a strategic site, our research documents a distinct pathway linking disadvantaged context to incarceration—the public-housing-to-prison pipeline. Focusing on New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) housing developments as a case study, we find that incarceration rates in NYCHA tracts are 4.6 times higher than those in non-NYCHA tracts. More strikingly, 94% of NYCHA tracts report rates above the median value for non-NYCHA tracts. Moreover, 17% of New York State’s incarcerated population originated from just 372 NYCHA tracts. Compared with non-NYCHA tracts, NYCHA tracts had higher shares of Black residents and were significantly more disadvantaged. This NYCHA disadvantage in concentrated incarceration is also robust at different spatial scales. Our findings have implications for policies and programs to disrupt community-based pipelines to prison.
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The evaluation findings suggest that BWCs, when deployed in the context of a court-mandated police reform regime, may help mitigate the harms generated by the public housing to prison pipeline that disproportionately incarcerates residents of Black and Hispanic neighborhoods with public housing present.
“Despite these limitations, the evaluation findings suggest that BWCs, when deployed in the context of a court-mandated police reform regime, may help mitigate the harms generated by the”
From Police reform in public housing contexts: Body‐worn cameras, surveillance, and harm reduction in New York City Housing Authority Developments (2024) · cites this paper as Holder et al., 2022
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“One unintended consequence of such collaborations, however, is the hyperpolicing and the hypersurveillance of public housing residents within and beyond NYCHA developments, with potentially lethal consequences for Black and Hispanic NYCHA residents including emotional trauma, social isolation, physical injuries, displ…”
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Braga, A. A., MacDonald, J. M., & McCabe, J. E. (2024) · Criminology & Public Policy · doi:10.1111/1745-9133.12679 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
- Authors
- Holder, J., Calaff, I., Maricque, B., & Tran, V. C.
- Affiliations
- Columbia University (US)
- Washington University in St. Louis (US)
- The Graduate Center, CUNY (US)
- Corresponding author
- Tran, Van C.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2022-08-29
- Volume
- 119
- Issue
- 36
- Pages
- e2123201119-e2123201119
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC9457320
- OpenAlex
- W4293485839
- Cited by
- 20
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 1
- FWCI
- 5.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Digital Commons@Becker (Washington University School of Medicine) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Graduate Center
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime Patterns and Interventions
- Keywords
- public housing, New York City Housing Authority, neighborhood disadvantage, Black residents, incarceration rates, regional disparities, New York City neighborhoods
- MeSH terms
- Black or African American, Humans, New York City, Prisons, Public Housing, Residence Characteristics, Vulnerable Populations, Black People
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