Research and media discussion of police contact routinely conceptualize it as time-constrained interactions between officers and civilians. However, extant literature documents preparation for encounters and post-encounter advocacy, which each challenge restricted understandings of contact and, importantly, its relationship to mental health. We introduce “perpetual encounters” to both theoretically and empirically move closer to the temporally unbounded and enduring way that police contact is experienced in black women’s everyday lives. Utilizing a novel, nationally representative dataset on their policing experiences, we explore how mental health is independently and conjointly associated with three dimensions of police contact: preparation, police stops, and advocacy against police violence. Beyond exemplifying how pervasive the police are in the day-to-day lives of marginalized communities, extending the scope of contact recognizes preparation as a significant threat to mental health and advocacy as a health-promoting activity. This study supports moving beyond discrete notions and measurement of police contact to process-oriented understandings and relational modeling.

中文翻译：

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永恒的相遇：重新概念化警察接触并衡量其与黑人女性心理健康的关系

关于警察接触的研究和媒体讨论通常将其概念化为警官和平民之间时间受限的互动。然而，现存的文献记录了相遇和相遇后倡导的准备工作，每一项都挑战了对接触的理解，重要的是，它与心理健康的关系。我们引入了“永久相遇”，从理论和实证上更接近黑人女性日常生活中经历的警察接触在时间上不受限制和持久的方式。利用一个新颖的、具有全国代表性的关于他们警务经历的数据集，我们探讨了心理健康如何独立和联合地与警察接触的三个维度相关联：准备、警察拦截和反对警察暴力的倡导。除了举例说明警察在边缘化社区的日常生活中有多普遍之外，扩大接触范围还认识到准备工作是对心理健康的重大威胁，并将宣传视为一项促进健康的活动。本研究支持超越警察接触的离散概念和测量，转向面向过程的理解和关系建模。