Neighborhoods, Stress, & Police Behavior: Understanding the Relationships. National Institute of Justice. Award number: 2017-R2-CX-0045 (Co-PI).

The study involves examine how the differing natures of the neighborhoods in which police officers work may affect their levels of stress and how that might manifest into negative policing outcomes. Of particular interest is how chronic environmental stressors affect patrol officers' bio-physiological stress response, its behavioral consequences, and the work-related factors that moderate these relationships. Survey data and saliva and blood samples were collected from 225 officers and will be used to determine officers' levels of stress. Officer's exposure to neighborhoods is being determined by correlating the time an officer spends in a particular census track with relevant data such as incident level crime data, infrastructure data, individuals living below the poverty line in that census track, etc. Data on officer street-level behavior (e.g., arrests, use of force, citizen complaints) is currently being collected from DPD managed records. All biometric and survey data has been collected. This project concludes December 31, 2020.

Victimization and Fear of Crime among Arab Americans in the Greater Detroit, MI Area. 2013 W.E.B. Du Bois Fellowship for Research in Race, Gender, Culture, and Crime. National Institute of Justice. Award number: 2013-IJ-CX-0020 (Co-PI).

The purpose of this project was threefold: (1) to investigate Arab Americans experiences with crime and factors that affect their risks of victimization; (2) to examine Arab Americans fear of crime and correlates of such fear; and (3) to assess Arab Americans willingness to report crime to the police. The goals of this research were to improve the ability of the criminal justice system to respond to crime, enhance community safety, and reduce fear of crime among this understudied, minority population. The data for this project were collected data via face-to-face interview surveys with 200 Arab American residents from randomly selected households in Dearborn (150 participants) and Dearborn Heights (50 participants), MI. In addition, identical interviews with 200 randomly selected non-Arab American households in the same geographic areas were conducted for comparison purposes. Multivariate regression analyses were used to assess the relative effects of different groups of explanatory variables on victimization and fear of crime among the participants. This study adds to the literature contextualizing the Arab American experience in the criminal justice realm, and illuminates the interaction effects of ethnicity, nationality, and culture on crime and justice.

Wu, Yuning and Charles Klahm. (in press). Self-Protection, Routine Activities and Victimization: Studying Arab Americans in Metro-Detroit. Violence and Victims, 34(6): 1030-1048.

Wu, Yuning, Charles Klahm, and Nada Attoui. (2017). Fear of Crime among Arab Americans in a Culture of Fear. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(14): 2481-2500.