This dissertation investigates the origins of inequalities in the application of state power. When do democratic institutions produce egalitarian outcomes, and when do they reinforce existing inequalities? How and when does descriptive representation change policy outcomes? I examine these questions in the context of a key point of contact between American citizens and the state: interactions with police. Previous work has shown that people of color are both more likely than whites to be arrested for similar behaviors, and less likely to receive aid from the criminal justice system in dealing with violence. In this dissertation, I argue that inequalities in the application of police power result from differences in local political representation.

The first section of my dissertation develops my theory of representation. I argue that descriptive representation has especially important consequences when intra-party differences between groups are high. Using national survey data, I show that black Democrats are far more concerned about both crime and police violence than white Democrats or Republicans. Historical case studies from both national and local policy-making suggest that when black Democrats cannot rely on their co-partisans to support their policy interests, descriptive representation plays a critical role in linking elite and mass interests.

Subsequent chapters develop and test a framework for understanding how institutions mediate political representation. While existing work has assessed how small numbers of black or female legislators engage in advocacy within legislative bodies, I find that subordinate groups can improve policy outcomes most effectively by holding political power -- that is, by changing the composition of city councils. Using genetic matching on a national data set of cities, I find that majority minority city councils reduce racial disparities in police enforcement by more than half. Majority power is key to changing policy outcomes.

Drawing on observations of neighborhood councils and primary source documents in rapidly gentrifying, racially mixed East Bay neighborhoods, I challenge the conventional wisdom that local participatory democracy improves accountability and police-community relationships. Instead, I find that these institutions enhance the power of neighborhood networks, which use the meetings to deploy police against members of the community they regard as dangerous. Divided communities with two major groups are particularly prone to capture by local elites; diverse or fragmented communities have more broadly representative institutions.

The final section examines the consequences of intensive policing for the distribution of police violence. Using a unique data set on police shootings from South Carolina, combined with a natural experiment on use of force in New York City, I show that racial disparities in police shootings owe more to racial differences in exposure to arrest than to differences in the risk of violence conditional on arrest.

These findings cast light on the conditions under which democratic institutions lead to inegalitarian outcomes. I argue that, when parties do not effectively represent the policy positions of racial minorities, minority groups need independent access to political power. Moreover, participatory democratic institutions often reflect and exacerbate existing political inequalities.

The effects of COVID-19 across California have been devastating, but the impact of the virus has been particularly acute in the state’s overcrowded prisons and jails.  The epidemic has clear implications for incarcerated individuals and their families, but also for the tens of thousands of Californians employed in the state’s prison system. These workers represent a powerful force in state politics (Myers, 2018; Williams et al., 2020).

This dissertation includes four essays, each of which speak to the importance of embracing a public management perspective in understanding the ways in which correctional officers play a critical role in the administration of justice.

Chapter 1 includes a systematic review of the literature on factors associated with violence in carceral settings, calling for greater inclusion of public management perspectives. While there are several prominent theories on what is associated with or causes violence in carceral settings, much of this work is dominated by importation theory and has been driven by analyses on limited sets of data in specific geographic contexts and with mainly individual-level factors situated largely within importation theory. This paper focuses especially on the lack of incorporation of management perspectives in the study of carceral violence. Through scraping Google Scholar results, I find that much of the literature is driven by individual-level data only, which cannot fully account for the context in which individuals are incarcerated, studies from the geographic context of the United States, largely published in criminal justice journals, and seldomly controls for staff-specific factors (i.e., disregards many crucial factors related to institutional management.) Implications for the future study of carceral violence and the limitations of the current body of evidence and our ability to develop effective solutions to carceral violence are discussed.

Chapter 2 includes co-authored work, analyzing survey data from correctional officers, focusing on how the coping mechanisms correctional officers employ to manage work-related stress, or how coping mechanisms affect workplace outcomes. To address these questions, we utilize original survey data about California correctional officers. We draw on the Stress Process Paradigm to model the relationship between exposure to violence and mental health, the impact of occupational stress on the development of coping mechanisms, and whether differential coping mechanism utilization impacts officers’ levels of cynicism and desire to leave corrections. Our findings suggest that emotion-focused coping (e.g., having someone to talk to) is associated with lower intentions to leave correctional employment, while the opposite is true for avoidant coping (i.e., alcohol abuse). These insights shed light on the problem of officer turnover and retention and provide potential direction to policymakers and practitioners seeking to create an effective, healthy workforce.

Chapter 3 includes co-authored work, focusing on the role of hierarchy in correctional officer decision-making. Hierarchy exists within bureaucratic agencies for several reasons, including to foster employee accountability. However, with hierarchy comes rigidity, and in times of emergency, this can stymie effective, expedient organizational response. Existing literature has examined the implications of hierarchy in emergency management, but limited work exists to understand hierarchy’s impacts on frontline worker decision-making during crises. In this paper, we contribute to this literature through an exploratory examination of the role of hierarchy on officer decision-making in a state prison system during the COVID-19 pandemic. As bureaucrats with the most direct interaction with incarcerated individuals, the decisions officers make have profound consequences for well-being of incarcerated people. Drawing on 50 interviews conducted amongst prison staff and incarcerated people, we utilize an expanded definition of hierarchy, one that reflects the ways in which power is granted and imposed both formally and informally. We find that correctional hierarchy is pervasive and complex, influencing officer decision-making through varying their perceived level of autonomy, despite the reality that, as street-level bureaucrats, they themselves are policymakers. Our results suggest that, to some extent, in contexts within which the imposition of hierarchy is reduced, officers autonomy may be bolstered, and this may improve their decision-making, particularly in ways that may leave incarcerated individuals under their care better-off.

Finally, Chapter 4, also including co-authored work, focuses on burnout among officers. Though correlational evidence links predictors of burnout to service delivery, limited causal evidence exists on how to improve officer well-being and how that impacts interactions with incarcerated individuals. In collaboration with a mid-sized U.S. Sheriff Department, we report results from a large-scale field experiment aimed at reducing burnout (n = 712). In an eight-week intervention, the treatment group was nudged to anonymously share experiences with others on a common platform (peer support), whereas the control was nudged to reflect on their experiences individually on a solo-access platform. Our findings suggest that peer support not only improved well-being and belonging amongst correctional officers, but also significantly improved their perceptions of incarcerated individuals. We fail to find significant differences in turnover or incident involvement, the latter of which is measured as both direct and indirect involvement in incidents within the jail or detention center. Thus, this study contributes to a burgeoning literature on how investments in public servants can causally improve well-being and perceptions of those they serve.

States have begun to pass legislation to provide automatic relief for eligible criminal records, potentially reducing the lifelong collateral consequences of criminal justice involvement. Yet numerous historical examples suggest that racially neutral policies can have profoundly disparate effects across racial groups. In the case of criminal record relief, racial equity in eligibility for a clean slate has not yet been examined. We find that in California, one in five people with convictions met criteria for full conviction relief under the state's automatic relief laws. Yet the share of Black Americans eligible for relief was lower than White Americans, reproducing racial disparities in criminal records. We identify two policy amendments that would reduce the share of Black men in California with convictions on their criminal records from 22% to 9%, thereby narrowing the difference compared to White men from 15 to seven percentage points. Put another way, an additional one in seven Black men currently has a conviction record, compared to their White counterparts. This would decline to an additional one in 14 if both hypothetical policy amendments were incorporated. We close with discussion of criminal history data quality limitations, which pose a second key challenge to equitable implementation of automatic criminal record relief reforms nationwide.

This work has been supported, in part, by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grants MRP-19-600774 and M21PR3278.

In this study, we assessed equity in criminal record relief eligibility in California, one of the first states to pass automatic record relief legislation. Our analysis included three components. First, using criminal history data from the California Department of Justice (CA DOJ), we assessed the share of people with criminal records who are eligible for automatic relief under current laws, and how this eligibility varied across racial and ethnic groups. Second, we evaluated two hypothetical reforms in how eligibility is determined that might alter equity across racial and ethnic groups: (a) relief for discretionary cases, and (b) a sunset rule that would automatically grant relief for convictions more than 7 years old. Finally, we estimated how each of these hypothetical reforms would alter population-level disparities in conviction records statewide.

This work has been supported, in part, by the University of California Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grants MRP-19-600774 and M21PR3278