Overview

Millions of people die each year around the world due to air pollution. Within the US there are tens of thousands of deaths and a majority of those are Black individuals despite Black people only making up roughly 13% of the US population. The US has worked to decrease its aggregate emissions, with focus on six criteria pollutants, over the last several decades. These reductions in emissions haven’t been felt evenly across the US; my data analysis found that between 1999 and 2020 there was a positive correlation between the percentage of Black people in a county and the average pollution of PM2.5. This reveals that despite the US’s success in reducing aggregate emissions, the US has not adequately addressed the environmental injustices around pollution and that Black people still face disproportionate pollution.

PM2.5 Pollution

Particulate matter as defined by the EPA “contains microscopic solids or liquid droplets that are so small that they can be inhaled and cause serious health problems” (EPA). Particulate matter makes its way into the air in many ways such as directly from sources like construction sites, fields, unpaved roads, and smokestacks (EPA). Particulates can also form while in the air from chemicals that are being emitted into the air like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides and those are pollutants that end up in the air from power plants, automobiles, and industries (EPA). PM can cause health problems through getting into one’s lungs or even bloodstream (EPA). The short term effects can include coughing or sneezing or irritation of the throat and lungs. Long term effects can vary from asthma to decreased lung function to premature death in those with heart disease (EPA). PM2.5 also has environmental effects including making streams or lakes acidic, depleting soil of its nutrients, affecting an ecosystem’s overall biodiversity, and contributing to acid rain effects (EPA). The acid rain can be especially damaging as it can cause harm to buildings, structures, and statues when it falls which can be disastrous if it falls on culturally, historically, or religiously important objects or structures.

Pollution Decreases

Interestingly enough, our overall aggregate emissions of the main criteria pollutants have decreased. Air pollution really took off after World War 2 in the mid 1900s when personal transportation (cars) became more popular, there was a surge in population (hence the Baby Boomer generation name), and suburbanization grew rapidly. The Clean Air Act was passed in 1970 so, when evaluating changes in air pollution we are really just looking at roughly a 50 year time period – 1970 to now. Overall, looking at 1970 to 2020 we see a 78% decrease in aggregate emissions for the six common pollutants (EPA). These decreases have come from a combination of efforts and policies. The EPA has required dramatic reductions in emissions from new motor vehicles and non-road engines. This has been accomplished in two parts – with cleaner engine technologies and cleaner fuel usages (EPA).

Historical Decisions Impacting Communities Now

Historical redlining has played a major role in the environmental injustices seen today throughout the country in the form of disproportionate air pollution rates. Redlining was a racially discriminatory practice back in the 1930s that classified cities in one of four ways. The worst grade was given to many Black/immigrant communities simply due to the presence of those individuals. These decisions resulted in isolation for those minority communities, difficulty building wealth for the citizens in those minority communities, and led governments to designate those minority communities as sites for hazardous industries. Hazardous industries in and near those communities would obviously result in disparities in pollution for those communities compared to richer communities of white people farther away. These hazardous industries were then able to grow and continue polluting as the decades went on leading to prolonged health effects and high rates of pollution in these designed “bad grade” communities. The pollution disparities seen today are strikingly similar to the ways in which 1930s neighborhoods were designated indicating a clear connection between the racist decisions made almost 100 years ago and the disproportionate pollution today. 

Data

Pollution data was collected from EPA’s website. The pollution data included measurements of PM2.5 taken from different sites in counties from every state for every year from 1999 to 2022. The demographic data came from SEER (National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program) and contained racial makeup of each county from 1999 to 2020 categorized as white, Black or other race. The data was organized which involved removing unnecessary information and creating columns that contained the percentage of each race’s makeup for each county. All of this data was merged into one dataset in order to complete regression analysis.

The regression analysis showed the exact effect of the percentage of Black people in a county in a given year on the average pollution for the same county, state, and year. After performing that regression, the summary of the model gave the following information: 13,561 observations for 142 counties in 50 states over 22 years, adjusted R2: 0.61674. When all of the data points were plotted regardless of county/state/year indicators, the graph looked like this:

Moving forward with decreasing pollution, greater emphasis needs to be put on targeting specific sources of pollution in specific counties where the levels of pollution are above average. These black counties are suffering while other counties in the nation have seen decreases in the emissions. It’s imperative to correct this environmental injustice.

Safina Beaty is a senior at IU double majoring in Law and Public Policy & Environmental Management with a minor in Spanish. She plans on attending law school in the future and wants to work on helping the environment and mitigating the effects of climate change. 

Every day, kids across the country find themselves in front of judges facing criminal charges.  These judges make decisions on where to remand kids: oftentimes choosing between public and private correctional facilities.  These decisions have profound impacts on a kid’s life—and they may be the difference between rehabilitation and continued criminal behavior.  The ability to compare the effectiveness of corrections facilities, especially publicly and privately operated facilities, is crucial for understanding the best means of rehabilitation.

However, there is a scarcity of research comparing public and private corrections facilities. We found in our analyses that much of the available criminal justice research fails to account for spurious relationships and misattributes some variables that should have been properly controlled for.  Research indicating that “women are less likely to commit violent crime” or “Black youths recidivate at a higher rate than their white peers” serves to further stereotypes, which is already a key area of concern for justice systems.

Our research aims to provide a starting point for future analyses of public and private juvenile facilities.  We examine why there is a scarcity of research comparing public and private corrections facilities and compare public and private juvenile residential facilities using publicly available time-series data.  Additionally, we use time-series data from 1997-2019 to assess race, gender, and most-severe offense type committed by juveniles held in a variety of facilities.  In our analyses, we find a few key differences in public and private juvenile facility populations.

Primarily, we found that status offenders were the only offense type with more juveniles incarcerated privately than publicly.  Status offenses include truancy, curfew violations, and age-related offenses like buying tobacco or alcohol under the legal age.  Further, youths who were detained for criminal homicide were far more likely to be incarcerated publicly than most other offense types, with overall public incarceration 167.6% percent higher than the privately held rate.  This may indicate that private facilities take easier-to-manage cases, requiring fewer resources.  This might allow facilities to maximize profits due to less-intensive resource demands and perhaps decreased likelihood of juvenile violence within private facilities.

Secondly, we found gender differences in public and privately held youths are minimal, although we do see a slight increase in male populations in public facilities and a similar decrease in private facilities for offenders between 2015 and 2019.  Females made up a much smaller percentage of incarcerated youths, between 4.7 and 5.2% of the total detained population each year.

Our analysis of racial and ethnic demographics in public and private facilities found that the overall demographic makeup of facilities remained relatively consistent from 1997-2019; with a slight overall decline in white populations and an increase in detained Hispanic populations as a percentage of total youth per year.  White and Hispanic percentages spiked in privately housed youths in 2013.  In the same year, the percentage of black publicly held youths dropped but spiked again in 2015.  White public and private percentages moved similarly up until that point.  The percentage of Hispanic incarcerated juveniles spiked similarly in 2013 and declined (at a higher rate in private facilities) every year following.  For white youths, private incarceration continued to decline, although public incarceration increased at a higher rate than the decline.  Black private incarceration declined rapidly after 2015, with public incarceration increasing at a relatively steady rate.

Overall, these differences should raise concerns for any research comparing public and private facilities.  The differences in offense type and race are especially notable; with private facilities more likely to house less resource-intense cases.  This topic demands further research; especially into whatever caused the spike in Hispanic and white juvenile incarceration in 2013.  Further, as long as private facilities are in operation, we should have a means and method of systematically comparing outcomes, not just for policymaking and research purposes, but for the further development of our youth.

Dorothy Reinhard is a graduating senior at Indiana University studying Public Policy Analysis and International Studies with a Certificate of Applied Research and Inquiry.