The Initiative on Cities (IOC) awarded five faculty-led teams with seed grant funding as a result of its call for COVID-19 Urban Research-to-Action proposals. Assistant Professor of Sociology Jessica Simes and Visiting Scholar in Sociology and Ph.D. candidate at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Jaquelyn Jahn received funding for their project, “Race, Place, and Policing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Multi-City Study.”
Jessica and Jaquelyn will examine if and how COVID-19 has changed low-level policing (which includes enforcement and arrests based on quality-of-life offenses such as disorderly conduct, property damage, unauthorized public gathering, or trespassing) in eight U.S. cities, particularly with regard to the racial inequities in rates of police-initiated interactions. You can learn more about their project on the IOC website.