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Primary Submission Category: Race/Ethnicity
Suicide-Related Hospitalizations Among Black Residents Following the Decline of Stop-and-Frisk in New York City
Authors: Parvati Singh,
Presenting Author: Parvati Singh*
Racially targeted policing practices may increase psychological stress and adverse mental health outcomes among Black populations. Emblematic of these patterns, New York City’s police department’s (NYPD) stop and frisk practices generated widespread concern that led to the class action lawsuit Floyd v. City of New York, which challenged their constitutionality and preceded major changes in NYPD hyper surveillance patterns. NYPD stop and frisk volume declined rapidly following the filing of the Floyd lawsuit in 2012, and a federal court declared the practice unconstitutional in 2013. We examined whether this period of rapid decline NYPD’s stop and frisk practice corresponded with reductions in suicide related hospitalizations among Black populations in New York City (NYC).
We used data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State Inpatient Database for all New York (NY) state counties from 2006 to 2015. We defined the outcome as county-year counts of hospitalizations for suicidal ideation or self-harm. We conducted a difference in difference in difference analysis using conditional fixed effects Poisson regression models. We defined the five NYC counties as the treated group and all other NY counties as the comparison group. We defined the post treatment period as years beginning in 2012. We estimated the triple difference coefficient by interacting the treated group, post period indicator and Black race indicators. Controls included unemployment, poverty, insurance coverage, and arrest rates.
We observed a 14.5 percent reduction in suicide related hospitalizations among Black residents in NYC during the post period relative to other NY counties and non-Black populations (IRR 0.85; 95% CI 0.83, 0.89). Event time models showed that the outcome decline appeared in the first post treatment year and strengthened in later years.
Reduction in NYPD’s racialized hyper-surveillance preceded a reduction in suicide-related hospitalizations among Black populations in NYC.