Police, courts, and corrections: Experiences of procedural injustice among Black adults.

Racial disparities and a corresponding lack of trust have been documented within the criminal legal system. In response, criminal legal system actors have sought to strengthen the legitimacy of their agencies. However, legitimizing these agencies can be problematic. Some argue that the current criminal legal system continues the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow as Blacks are disproportionately policed and incarcerated. As a framework, procedural injustice can offer a unique backdrop and interrogate ways in which the criminal legal system engages in delegitimizing actions that provoke noncompliance and enable social control. Using a procedural injustice lens, this study examines how justice-involved Black adults experience mistreatment by justice system actors. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 84 Black adults in Newark and Cleveland. Study findings offer a comprehensive account of how participants experience procedural injustice as arrestees, defendants, and incarcerated persons. More specifically, participant narratives describe deliberately antagonistic, abusive, and dehumanizing treatment by justice-system agents-often depicted as racially motivated. Participant accounts also describe this mistreatment as occurring in a context of coercion and powerlessness and as being institutionally sanctioned. Implications for the preservation of racial hierarchies, research, practice, and community psychology are discussed.

'We Can't Get No Nine-to-Five': New York City Gang Membership as a Response to the Structural Violence of Everyday Life.

This article draws on 287 in-depth interviews with young New York City gang members to understand the roles gangs serve in their lives, the impact of labeling the gang as criminal, and what a more critical perspective on gangs reveals about violence. Findings show that these youth find themselves in double-binds. While their gang membership is largely a reaction to the inequities and marginality they face from the police, unemployment, and poverty, efforts they undertake to survive-joining gangs, selling drugs, carrying weapons-only deepen their vulnerability to discrimination, involvement in the criminal legal system, and interpersonal violence. Violence prevention programs that eschew structural violence as a root cause of crime and community violence cannot succeed in achieving long-term safety for such communities. Prevention efforts must address the realities of what gangs provide for their members, building safe space and supportive community to bridge participants to the supports they need.

Toward a smoke-free Harlem: engaging families, agencies, and community-based programs.

The aim of this collaborative public health study was to engage families, agencies, and programs in reducing secondhand smoke exposure in Central Harlem, New York City. Baseline interviews (n=657) and focus groups (n=4) were conducted with adult members of households with children who had asthma and asthma-like symptoms in the Harlem Children's Zone Asthma Initiative. The interviews concerned the prevalence and determinants of exposure of enrolled children to secondhand smoke. Key findings were that participants: (1) were generally aware of the hazards of secondhand smoke; (2) used strategies to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke in their homes; (3) believed that outdoor pollutants are sometimes just as bad for the health of their children as secondhand smoke; and (4) used smoking to provide stress relief and help diffuse otherwise volatile situations in their homes. The Harlem Smoke-Free Home Campaign was launched in October 2007 based in part on these findings.

Childhood asthma and extreme values of body mass index: the Harlem Children's Zone Asthma Initiative.

To examine the association between body mass index (BMI) percentile and asthma in children 2-11 years of age, we performed a cross-sectional analysis of 853 Black and Hispanic children from a community-based sample of 2- to 11-year olds with measured heights and weights screened for asthma by the Harlem Children's Zone Asthma Initiative. Current asthma was defined as parent/guardian-reported diagnosis of asthma and asthma-related symptoms or emergency care in the previous 12 months. Among girls, asthma prevalence increased approximately linearly with increasing body mass index (BMI) percentile, from a low of 12.0% among underweight girls (BMI 95th percentile). After adjusting for age, race/ethnicity, and household smoking, among girls, having asthma was associated with being at risk for overweight (odds ratio [OR], 2.6; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.4-5.0) and being overweight (OR, 2.1; 95% CI, 1.2-3.8) compared to normal weight; among boys, having asthma was associated both with overweight (OR, 2.4; 95% CI, 1.4-4.3) and with underweight (OR, 2.9; 95% CI, 1.1-7.7). Large, prospective studies that include very young children are needed to further explore the observed association between underweight and asthma among boys. Early interventions that concomitantly address asthma and weight gain are needed among pre-school and school-aged children.