Highlights of 2011 - Institute for Policy Research - Northwestern ...

Urban Policy and Community Development
From left: IPR political scientist Wesley G. Skogan, sociolegal scholar and IPR associate John Hagan, and University of Chicago
economist Jens Ludwig discuss recent changes to the criminal justice system with Chicago Police Lieutenant Mike Dejanovich.
RESEARCH TOPICS:
• Urban poverty concentration
• Cross-national urban issues
• Race and income segregation
• Community policing and criminal justice
• Public and mixed-income housing
21st Century Justice
Three of the nation’s leading researchers on crime and criminal
justice discussed some major changes in the American criminal
justice system and policy implications at a March 28 IPR forum
at Northwestern University. IPR political scientist Wesley G.
Skogan took stock of policing reforms. Though enthusiastically
brought forward, reforms and innovations often fail due to
factors such as rapid leadership turnover and poor inter-agency
cooperation. Looking ahead, Skogan pointed to technological
innovations—such as in-car cameras and data warehouses.
IPR associate John Hagan, John D. MacArthur Professor of
Sociology and Law, discussed changes in prison funding in
California. Since 1992, prisons are no longer built with pay-asyou-go
funding, but with lease-revenue bonds, which do not
require voter approval, create public debt, and generate fees for
the institutions servicing the debt—helping to create economic
incentives to build more. Discussing the enormous difficulties
of trying to change gun regulations, University of Chicago
economist Jens Ludwig recommended focusing on stepped-up
enforcement by reducing young people’s access to and use of
guns, targeting illegal gun-carrying, and cracking down on gunsupply
networks to prevent criminals from obtaining them.
Segregation and Contextual Advantage
At the 2011 annual meeting of the Population Association of
America, IPR sociologist Lincoln Quillian discussed his work
to provide a formal demographic model of how segregation
contributes to inequality through increasing the level of
contextual advantage experienced by members of advantaged
segregated groups and the level of contextual disadvantage of
disadvantaged segregated groups. His model begins with two
groups that differ along a dimension of average advantage
and disadvantage, such as two racial groups that differ in
their poverty rates. The model employs standard measures
of segregation and contact, and illustrates how the contextual
advantages and disadvantages from segregation are affected
by the size of the group and the rates of group advantage (or
disadvantage). It also considers complexities that occur when
the characteristics that define advantages or disadvantages,
such as income or poverty, have independent effects. The
decomposition can be applied to understand how segregation
contributes to contextual advantage for advantaged group
members in a variety of situations, including neighborhoods,
schools, and friendship networks.
54 INSTITUTE FOR POLICY RESEARCH