Doctoral Dissertation Research: Kaufman: Examining Perceptions and Spatial Interactions Between Children and Law Enforcement

The objective of this research is to analyze the lived realities of black children in heavily policed Cincinnati neighborhoods, assess the impacts of racialized policing on their everyday lives, and learn from their implicit or articulated contestations of policing. I expect that even before they are old enough to be directly entangled with the criminal justice system, black children navigate tenuous and fraught landscapes of hyper-securitization. Specifically, I expect that 1) even young black children will have had encounters with the police in some form, 2) policing, both materially and conceptually, will provoke fear and diminish well-being for these children, 3) this fear—and adjustments of practices in response to fear—will affect their daily lives, and 4) they will in turn adapt to these realities in ways that may constitute resistance, either through material or imaginary practices. Speaking to children in targeted areas about policing will not only add new voices to children’s and policing geographies, but could give foresight into future civilian-police relations—useful to community leaders, police-abolitionists, police reformers, and police concerned with rebuilding racially fractured relationships.