Join UC Berkeley Associate Professor of Public Policy Amy Lerman for a discussion of her most recent work.

In light of recent events in Ferguson, the culture and consequences of policing in America has received a great deal of attention. As many studies have documented, the prevalence of police encounters has grown exponentially over the last few decades. In a nationally representative sample of young Americans, fully 20 percent report having been stopped and questioned at least once by police but never arrested, and about half that number have been arrested but never convicted of a crime. These proportions are significantly higher among low-income and minority youth. Setting aside debates about the causes of these remarkable trends, we still know surprisingly little about their effects on democratic life. Do encounters with criminal justice affect Americans’ attitudes toward government, shape their perspectives on race, and alter their likelihood of voting or engaging in other forms of citizen participation? Using a wide range of evidence, we show that adversarial, involuntary contacts with criminal justice institutions are highly predictive of what people come to believe about government, how they view race and class in America, and how they understand their own civic standing. From encounters with police, prosecutors, courts, and prisons, Americans learn it is best to remain quiet, make no demands, and actively avoid formal institutions and figures of authority. This “civic learning” stands starkly at odds with widely-held conceptions of the participatory and engaged democratic citizen.