Community representation and policing: Effects on Black civilians.

Does increased representation of Black individuals in the police force lead to less aggressive policing of Black individuals? The current study uses a Chicago panel data set with monthly police unit observations between 2013 and 2015 to understand 1) how police units' representation of Black individuals affects the number of stops of Black residents and 2) how individual police officers patrol differently depending on the racial/ethnic background of co-working officers. Using fixed-effects negative binomial regression, we found that increasing racial congruence between police officers and the community being patrolled was associated over time with fewer stops of Black residents. Individual analyses showed that Black (vs.

Predicting history.

Can events be accurately described as historic at the time they are happening? Claims of this sort are in effect predictions about the evaluations of future historians; that is, that they will regard the events in question as significant. Here we provide empirical evidence in support of earlier philosophical arguments that such claims are likely to be spurious and that, conversely, many events that will one day be viewed as historic attract little attention at the time. We introduce a conceptual and methodological framework for applying machine learning prediction models to large corpora of digitized historical archives.