The Signaling Properties of Police Violence for White Citizenship

The emerging connection between police violence and the citizenship of historically marginalized populations in high violence neighborhoods has proved of significant interest to scholars. There is ample research arguing that criminal justice contact (either in the form of arrest, police interaction, or incarceration) drives certain populations away from political participation, and others towards more political participation. However, there has been less research into the possible impacts of police violence on the citizenship of those not faced with such interaction. In both Europe and the United States this population is generally both whiter and wealthier than the population facing regular police contact. This paper hypothesizes that one of the effects of police violence against marginalized populations is that it serves as a signaling effect to more privileged populations that the state is working in their interests. This paper will present an evaluation of the current literature on political signaling, policy feed-back, and political behavior as related to police violence, in order to more fully develop a detailed hypothesis and research plan. Both the United States and France are appropriate areas for which to evaluate this hypothesis. Police activity in both countries is regularly publicized, and there are sufficiently frequent incidents of public, ‘spectacular’ violence that have had effects on the mood of the general public.