Getting at the Root: Structural Racism, Policing, and Youth Firearm Homicide

Introduction: Although recent studies have shown that structural racism impacts violent injury, how it impacts youth violence is poorly defined. The objective of this study was to examine the relationships between 2 markers of structural racism—neighborhood racial–income residential segregation and police stop-and-search encounters—on youth firearm homicide. Methods: A longitudinal ecologic study was conducted among New Orleans neighborhoods with publicly historical data (2018–2023) from the New Orleans Police Department and the American Community Survey as well as contractually approved data from the Louisiana Department of Health, New Orleans Coroner's Office, and New Orleans Police Department. The outcome measure included the number of youth firearm homicide victims for any given census tract. Exposures included racialized economic polarization as measured by the Index of Concentration at the Extremes and the count of police stop-and-search encounters within a census tract. Results: Neighborhood racial–income segregation was significantly and positively associated with youth homicides, with the relationship remaining in most models even after accounting for other neighborhood covariates and with both random and fixed effects. There was no significant association between total police stop-and-search encounters nor youth stop and search encounters and youth firearm homicide victimization. Conclusions: Interventions that strongly consider structural racism at the neighborhood level may help mitigate the crisis of youth violence and racial inequities in youth violence.