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What the 1968 Kerner Commission can teach us
Historic image of police storming a storefront in 1967 during a riot in Detroit.

President Lyndon Johnson established the Kerner Commission to identify the genesis of the violence in the 1960s that killed 43 in Detroit and 26 in Newark. Pictured here, soldiers in a Newark storefront. (Image: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)

  • Q&A

    • What the 1968 Kerner Commission can teach us

    Criminologist and statistician Richard Berk, who worked on the report as a graduate student, explains the systemic racism and poverty found to underlie violent unrest in the 1960s and where COVID-19 and the economy fit today.

    Michele W. Berger

    The lasting effects of stop-and-frisk in Bloomberg’s New York

    The lasting effects of stop-and-frisk in Bloomberg’s New York

    John MacDonald of the School of Arts and Sciences discussed the unproductive majority of street stops made by police under stop-and-frisk. “Who’s being affected by that?” he asked. “It’s going to be people who, for example, may be likely voters, who are trying to go to school, who are afraid because they normally wouldn’t have interactions with police that are intrusive. That’s not your average offender. That’s your average citizen.”

    Bloomberg stop and frisk comments resurface, said he put ‘all the cops’ in minority neighborhoods ‘where all the crime is’

    Bloomberg stop and frisk comments resurface, said he put ‘all the cops’ in minority neighborhoods ‘where all the crime is’

    John MacDonald of the School of Arts and Sciences was cited for his analysis of the reduction in New York City crime rates, which has been attributed to stop and frisk policies. “Saturating high crime neighborhoods with extra police helped reduce crime in New York, but the bulk of investigative stops did not play a meaningful role in the crime reduction,” he wrote.

    An algorithm that grants freedom, or takes it away

    An algorithm that grants freedom, or takes it away

    An algorithm created for the Philadelphia Adult Probation and Parole Department by Richard Berk of the School of Arts and Sciences tries to improve on human judgement by excluding data that could be a proxy for race. “All machine-learning algorithms are black boxes, but the human brain is also a black box,” he said.

    Using science to make cities safer and healthier
    Two people standing in front of a fenced-in vacant lot, one leaning against the fence, the other standing with arms crossed.

    Penn Medicine’s Eugenia South, seen here with John MacDonald of the Department of Criminology, studies the effect of chronic stress and neighborhood environment on health outcomes. South’s latest pilot, Nurtured in Nature, follows work from the pair showing that cleaning up vacant lots leads to a signifiant decrease in gun violence and less stress for local residents. (Pre-pandemic photo)

  • Q&A

    • Using science to make cities safer and healthier

    In a Q&A, criminologist John MacDonald discusses his new book, grounded in years of research on the positive effects of remediation like fixing up abandoned lots and houses.

    Michele W. Berger

    Algorithms were supposed to make Virginia judges fairer. What actually happened was far more complicated

    Algorithms were supposed to make Virginia judges fairer. What actually happened was far more complicated

    Aurélie Ouss of the School of Arts and Sciences praised a study that proved that algorithms are imperfect tools when it comes to predicting crime. She said that, ultimately, the usefulness of algorithms in criminal justice comes down to implementation: “It may be a case that a different tool that’s designed differently—that judges use differently—would yield different results.”

    Childhood exposure to trauma costs society $458 billion annually
    A young child sits in a hallway burying their head in their arms on a rather dirty carpet

    Childhood exposure to trauma costs society $458 billion annually

    Bureaucratic hurdles block access to treatment services, so they tend to go unused. This leads to adverse outcomes that put stress on public systems like social services and law enforcement.

    Michele W. Berger