Article A Test of the Differential Involvement Hypothesis James Unnever 1 , Akwasi Owusu-Bempah 2 and Rustu Deryol 1 Abstract This research draws on longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) to examine whether African Americans report more trouble with the police than Latinos, Whites, and members of other racial groups after controlling for self-reported offending and other covariates. We tested whether the average self-reports of trouble with the police varied across the neigh- borhood clusters included within the PHDCN and generated a series of negative binomial models to assess whether African Americans self-reported more trouble with the police than others. The results generated from the unconditional hierarchical model showed that the average self-reports of trouble with the police did not sig- nificantly vary across the neighborhoods. The negative binomial results indicate that African Americans report significantly more trouble with the police while controlling for the respondents’ levels of offending, level of impulsivity, levels of anxiety and depression, gang membership, their family’s criminal involvement, whether they or their parents had serious mental health issues, the respondents’ current and expected economic conditions, their racial affinity, as well as other individual characteristics. Keywords race, police, racism, bias, contact A number of studies document that African Americans report more frequent encounters with the police than members of other racial groups. The kinds and scope of these interactions are relatively vast. Scholars have documented them in relation to 1 University of South Florida, Department of Criminology, Sarasota, FL, USA 2 University of Toronto, Department of Sociology, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Corresponding Author: James Unnever, University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee, 8350 N Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34243, USA. Email: unnever@sar.usf.edu Race and Justice 1-28 ª The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/2153368717697104 journals.sagepub.com/home/raj