Cumulative Dehumanization in Everyday Policing: The Psychological, Affective, and Material Consequences of Discretionary Arrests. Issue 1 (10th September 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bustamante, Priscilla; Jashnani, Gaurav; Stoudt, Brett G.
• Is Part Of: Analyses of social issues and public policy. Volume 19:Issue 1(2019)
• Page Start: 305
• Page End: 348
• Publication Date: 2019-09-10
• Subjects: Social policy -- Psychological aspects -- Periodicals; Social psychology -- Periodicals; 361.6105
• DOI: 10.1111/asap.12187
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1529-7489

Abstract

Abstract: Amid aggressive surveillance and policing practices, Black Lives Matter has appeared—a social movement whose very name highlights collective resistance to pervasive dehumanization. Psychological studies find the persistent dehumanization of people of color and endorsement of legitimated violence against those dehumanized. As part of broken windows policing, people of color also disproportionately experience discretionary arrests, or charges for low‐level, nonviolent offenses legally recognized as noncriminal. Accordingly, drawing upon data from over 200 interviews and surveys, we report on New Yorkers' experiences of dehumanization during discretionary arrests. In doing so, we introduce a new conceptual framework called "cumulative dehumanization, " to illuminate an ongoing state‐sanctioned, racialized dehumanization that is fundamentally cumulative, both temporally and spatially. We conceptualize cumulative dehumanization as: (a) an accumulation of systemic dehumanizing moments, experienced as an active condition of becoming; (b) a weathering of the racialized affective body, generating various modes of community dispossession; (c) a product and (re)producer of the material and ideological mechanisms upholding racial capitalism; and (d) a complementary accumulation of individual and collective resistance. Attending to amplified processes and consequences within the uneven power dynamics of daily policing practices, we connect everyday, state‐sanctioned dehumanization to cognitive, embodied, psychological, social, material, ideological, and political circuits.