Does Stop-and-Frisk Create More Crime?

Stop-and-frisk proponents argue that the aggressive police tactic is necessary for “crime prevention.”

But rather than deterring crime, do aggressive policing tactics like stop-and-frisk paradoxically generate crime by creating the conditions in which “criminals” are made?

Jim Dwyer, writing for the New York Times, addresses the “manufactured misdemeanor” phenomenon where poor, inner city African-American and Latino men are disproportionately arrested for possession of small amounts of marijuana, most notably because they are the targets of stop-and-frisk, and therefore have much more frequent interactions with authorities:

More interactions with authorities because of one’s placement within a hierarchy constituted by race, class, age, gender, and place means more opportunities for individuals of the targeted demographic to get busted for minor infractions that occur broadly across the social spectrum.

Thus, stop-and-frisk produces “criminals” by targeting African-American and Latino youth for popular infractions that are overlooked in the United States at large. The tactic increases arrests for petty offenders, and targets society’s already highly-expendable, marginalized populations, the proverbial “low-hanging fruit.”

All of this is to say that individuals targeted by stop-and-frisk have a far greater chance of ending up as one of the 12 million bodies processed each year by the carceral state – which has experienced an explosion in population in the United States since 1975 on the backs of the very targets of stop-and-frisk.

The rise of hyper-aggressive policing in the United States over the last 40 years, of which stop-and-frisk is one critical example, reproduces the conditions that lead to violence and criminality in the first place.

The intensification of police aggression in poor communities also increases another form of criminality, state criminality, with stop-and-frisk a pivotal exercise in excess police power, leading to myriad extrajudicial police crimes and police abuses in targeted communities.

More interactions with police officers create more chances for state crime and violence and further generates helplessness, insecurity, and fear – the types of things that lead poor youth to join gangs for protection – which only fuels the cycle toward greater incarceration and criminality.

More interactions between intrusive, aggressive officers and targets under siege means a greater likelihood of testy exchanges, particularly in instances of invasive and unconstitutional stop-and-frisks, and allows vengeful police officers to make arbitrary arrests that originate with responses to the unconstitutional stop and search in the first place.

Proponents of stop-and-frisk fail to grasp how Draconian policing leads to real forms of social stigmatization, diminishes life opportunities, limits basic rights, creates mass joblessness, and leaves individuals with few alternatives to the informal economy.

Meanwhile, targeted arrest of people of color for things like petty drug possession, though drugs are statistically used equally by all populations, recreates the aura of criminality attached to black and brown skin and fuels the incarceration of these targeted populations.

Proponents of stop-and-frisk also fail to take into account how the increase in state aggression on targeted communities can transform police officers on the beat into petty criminals and thugs who operate in the gray areas of laws that protect them from the fate of their targets.