Redlining & Policing
Introduction
This is the repository for an independent study exploring the relationship between redlining and policing in St. Louis. This project took place in Fall 2020 at Saint Louis University in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology. THe project focuses on exploring two datasets and applying simple machine learning techniques on them to examine if there is a proper path forward to relate them together. As a working project, this repository is subject to change as the project progresses, as the research paper indicates. Original data includes data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and from the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. Overall, the project attempts to build a basis for a proper classification model to be applied to the data to predict a relationship between redlining and policing in St. Louis.
The two main pieces of software used in this analysis is RStudio and Python. St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department crime data was accessed via the Compstatr package developed by Christopher Prener, PhD., Cree Foeller, & Taylor Braswell. Finally, machine learning models were built using the existing modules from Sci-kit Learn
Repository Contents
Data- all clean data utilized in the projectDocs- the R & Jupyter notebooks for all methods & analysis in the project- The PDF version of the working paper
Acknowledgements
I would like to specifically thank Dr. Christopher Prener for working with me during this project and providing an outline for direction during this Independent Study. Dr. Prener guided the direction of the project based on readings and my own aspirations and did a fantastic job at pointing me in the right direction while also allowing my own skillset to shine and providing access to the resources needed throughout the duration of the course.
About Carter
Carter Hanford graduated in 2018 from Saint Louis University (SLU) with a Sociology B.A. from the College of Arts and Sciences and a minor in Mathematics from the department of Mathematics and Statistics. He attended Jefferson College prior to his time at SLU, obtaining an associates degree in Mathematics. While an undergrad, Carter was a member of the Saint Louis University NCAA Division 1 baseball team, and during his time on the SLU Baseball team, he was a key contributor on the 2018 Atlantic-10 championship team, starting all 56 games at third base. Him and the team went on to compete on the national level, playing Ole Miss and Missouri State at the University of Mississippi on ESPN in front of 15,000+ fans.
Carter is now a graduate student working towards a Sociology M.A. and minors in GIS and research methodology from the department of sociology and anthropology. His research interests include: GIS, open-source coding (R, Python), quantitative analysis, and urban sociology. Carter works as a graduate research assistant in the department, conducting research with faculty members and also assisting in their teaching needs. Carter is a member of Dr. Christopher Prener's research team, PrenerLab, studying historical redlining practices in the city of St. Louis from a geopgraphic, spatial framework. Carter will graduate in May of 2021.
About Saint Louis University 
Founded in 1818, Saint Louis University is one of the nations oldest and most prestigious Catholic institutions. Rooted in Jesuit values and its pioneering history as the first university west of the Mississippi River, SLU offers nearly 13,000 students a rigorous, transformative education of the whole person. At the core of the University's diverse community of scholars is SLU's service-focused mission, which challenges and prepares students to make the world a better, more just place.