Prosecutors play a significant role in determining the course of criminal cases and defendant outcomes. However, little research has examined how the legal environment changes when a reform-minded prosecutor takes office. Political scientist Jon Gould and criminologist Belén Lowrey-Kinberg will examine how the election of reform-minded chief prosecutors affects defendant outcomes, particularly racial disparities in outcomes. They will conduct interviews for and analyze data from administrative data from prosecutors’ offices from two jurisdictions for their study.
Since the late 1990s, federal government programs have given billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment to local law enforcement agencies and has subsidized the purchase of surveillance drones, lethal robots, and facial recognition software. The assessments used to determine which local departments to target rely on factors that are highly correlated with non-White populations.
Employee Hardship Funds (EHFs) are a fast-growing form of employer-driven worker mutual aid. Over 300 firms, including nine of the ten largest retailers, maintained an EHF as of December 2022. However, little is known about their effects. Political scientist John Ahlquist will examine the extent to which EHFs affect workers’ feelings of financial security, workplace attachment, and support for unionization. He will conduct surveys and survey experiments for his study.
Racially restrictive housing covenants – used by white homeowners to prevent migration of people of color into their neighborhoods – contributed to contemporary patterns of residential segregation, social stratification, and inequality. Yet, policy proposals to correct these historical wrongs have not gained broad support. Political scientist Bryant Moy will investigate whether awareness of racially restrictive housing covenants bolsters support for reparations. He will conduct a nationally representative survey experiment for his study.
People of Color (PoC) differ by their time and mode of arrival in the U.S., their contact with institutions, and individual and group experiences with discrimination. This social category aims to capture the collective identity of different low-status groups, as a shared sense of being treated differently than Whites might lead to greater solidarity with other PoC and increase support for policies that benefit other minoritized groups. To what extent does inter-minority solidarity translate into political action?
In August 2022, the Biden Administration announced plans to forgive billions in student loan debt. Proponents of the plans see it as responsible public policy, while critics see it as placing an unfair burden on taxpayers. Political scientist Alessandro Del Ponte and colleagues will examine the factors that are associated with attitudes toward loan forgiveness using a nationally representative survey experiment of 8,000 respondents.
Research on the effectiveness of prejudice reduction techniques has shown mixed results, and rarely explores their effects on policy attitudes. One method of reducing prejudice draws on the psychological theory of perspective-taking, which posits that encouraging individuals to adopt the perspective of out-group members can decrease prejudice towards the group.
The U.S. is undergoing a historic demographic shift as, collectively, Asian, Black, Latino, multiracial, and other people of color are projected to become the numerical majority. To date, most social science research has employed controlled experiments to study the response of non-Hispanic Whites to this projected change. This project will center people of color and take advantage of a natural experiment—the release of new census projections in 2023—to understand the effects of real-world exposure to racial projections on public opinion.