According to new research by Briana Brownlow '22 across every psychological risk factor for arrest in adulthood, Black Americans were arrested at a higher rate than white Americans.
By Emily Caldwell
Ohio State News
caldwell.151@osu.edu
Black adults who are experiencing emotion dysregulation and/or psychological disorders, particularly Black men, are more likely to be arrested than are white American adults with symptoms of the same level of severity, a new study has found.
Researchers analyzing data from a sample of over 1,500 adults found that this higher risk for arrest among Black people with mental health diagnoses was consistent even when controlling for other factors often linked to arrest, such as substance misuse and low socioeconomic status.
“What we found is that even when people were at the same symptom levels, particularly on the higher end of anger and aggression, the arrest rates were sometimes double, triple, even 5 times higher for Black Americans, and particularly for Black men,” said lead author Briana Brownlow, who earned her PhD in psychology at The Ohio State University in 2022. “And arrests rates for Black women were consistently higher than white women, and at times they were tracking the same as or surpassing white men at the same level of symptom severity.”
