Haley Flavin & Ciara Bishop

JOR310

Professor Phipps

14 December 2017

Final Paper APRA Data

With this project encompassing 26 of 39 cities and towns in the state of Rhode Island, it

can be determined that our data serves as a plausible and reliable source. This project as a whole

has opened our eyes to citations of marijuana and how different towns and cities react towards

them. With numbers varying, we have found similarities as well as differences throughout and

believe we can speak on behalf of the state of Rhode Island and the law enforcement. In terms of

the state a as a whole, with cities and towns of varying sizes and populations, the average

number of citations was 224. With this being said, as we evaluate each city or town studied, you

can assume that these numbers are higher or lower based on the overall population.

It is interesting to see that although Providence has the largest population with 178,042,

Warwick with a population of 82,672 has nearly 4 times the amount of citations. Also, Pawtucket

has 600 citations with a population of 71,148 and even Westerly and South Kingstown have

higher amounts of citations with 307 in South Kingstown and 372 in Westerly. These are just a

few of the towns that outnumber the amount of citations in Providence. Before looking at the

data, it can be assumed that Providence is more concerned about other arrests and citations and

does not put as heavy a value on catching people for their use of marijuana. Another assumption

that we made by logical reasoning is that South Kingstown has a higher population of college

students and people who may be experimenting more heavily with marijuana during their time

residing at URI. In the document with all APRA data, South Kingstown is lacking any kind of
information, making it difficult to connect these assumptions with numbers and demographics.

On top of this, Westerly is a beach area, highly populated with tourists during the summer with

less to do during the winter months. We may be able to conclude that because people are visiting

here for vacation that they are more laid back and use marijuana on the beaches or as they are on

their way there during the summer months. We can also assume that there are police officers are

out and about patrolling the roads while they are highly populated during the summer months.

Being from Rhode Island, I know that the parking restrictions are prevalent and people are

constantly getting ticketed, meaning there is law enforcement out and looking into cars, probably

finding people using marijuana and citing them. When looking at Warwick, Rhode Island, who

has the highest amount of citations, the only demographics they obtained were on gender. It was

revealed by their department that 155 of citations were male and 34 were female, bringing it to a

82% male and 18% female conclusion. Because of this it can be assumed that officers stereotype

with males and are more likely to cite them than a female who they might assume to be innocent.

With the results of Warwick, we decided to further investigate the gender discrimination

in citations for Rhode Island. When talking to Cara Caputo, a senior Human Development and

Family Studies major at the University of Rhode Island (URI) she explained to me a situation she

was in when smoking with her boyfriend in their car in Narragansett, RI. A police officer pulled

up to her parked car, getting out to interrogate her and her boyfriend. Upon doing this, Caputo

explained to me that he ignored the fact that she was in the car and only questioned her

boyfriend. She felt discriminated and as if just because she was female that she could not have

done any wrong. When looking at the data, Providence had 522 of their citations being male and

41 being female. Ongoing, East Greenwich only had 37 citations and 28 of the 37 were male. In

East Providence, of their 75 citations, 65 of them were male. In Warren, of the 69 citations, 53 of
them were male. West Warwick has 190 total citations and 155 were male, while 34 were

female. Cranston had 187 and 159 of them are male Narragansett had 153 citations, 130 being

male and 23 being female. With these cities and towns giving a general consensus we can

assume that police officers are less likely to either approach or cite females.

We then moved onto analysing based on race. Many cities and towns were not able to

receive demographic and racial data, making it difficult to create a conclusion. A few cities that

stood out were Newport, Warren and Johnston. In Warren, 52 of the citations were white and 7

of them were black. In Warren, according to city data the city is 94.8% white and 1% black.

Newport is 83% white and 7% black. With this, 151 of their citations were white and 80 were

black. With this data, we believe based upon the town/ city population that the amount of african

american is high compared to the population. We cannot assume that those who received

citations are residents, but it is a possibility and we cannot assume those visiting would be much

different of a statistic in terms of race. What data added to the idea that we believe blacks may be

targeted is that of Johnston’s 88.8% white population, they had 91 citations that were black and

81 that were white. This is a huge statistic because it overly reflects on the population being of

majority white. This should absolutely be taken into consideration when making conclusions on

our data and the treatment of race in law enforcement.

We believe that these two areas of significant make the most impactful conclusions.

Other than this, we believe that the numbers of citations are concurrent with the population, other

than what we explained earlier in our analysis. Most towns and cities had the most number of

people cited in 2012, when it was still criminalized, leading us to believe that police officers

were on the hunt to give citations but have come to care less now that it is no longer

criminalized. We were not able to come to a significant conclusion on which year across the state
had the most citations, as they were different in almost every town. This project has opened our

eyes to the importance of looking at demographic information in citations, and although many

cities and towns were not able to obtain this information, we believe the significance of what we

has holds enough power to make assumptions.