A growing body of work documents the relationship between criminal justice and health has emerged in recent years, including the association between unfair treatment by the police (UTBP) and violent/racialized policing and health outcomes. However, little is known about the resources that could reduce the harmful consequences to well-being of UTBP. Using data from the Nashville Stress and Health Study, we consider both depressive symptoms and allostatic load (a physiological marker of health) and several dimensions of religiosity as stress buffers. African Americans (but not Whites) who experienced personal police contact reported higher depressive symptoms relative to those who experienced no police contact and those reporting vicarious UTBP. Weekly religious attendance and higher church-based support (but not beliefs in divine control, a causal attribution of God’s influence in daily life) mitigated this relationship. African Americans with personal UTBP had higher allostatic load than those with no UTBP. Neither church attendance nor church-based social support attenuated the relationship between personal UTBP and allostatic load, nor did divine control. We discuss how the results of our study can help clarify the parameters of the effectiveness of religious/spiritual coping for African Americans and their implications for criminal justice reform.

近年来，越来越多的工作记录了刑事司法与健康之间的关系，包括警察的不公平待遇 (UTBP) 与暴力/种族化警务和健康结果之间的关联。然而，对于可以减少对 UTBP 福祉的有害后果的资源知之甚少。使用来自纳什维尔压力与健康研究的数据，我们将抑郁症状和平衡负荷（健康的生理标志）以及宗教信仰的几个维度视为压力缓冲。与没有警察接触的人和报告替代 UTBP 的人相比，经历过私人警察接触的非裔美国人（但不是白人）报告的抑郁症状更高。每周参加宗教活动和更高的基于教会的支持（但不是对神圣控制的信仰，上帝在日常生活中的影响的因果归因）减轻了这种关系。具有个人 UTBP 的非裔美国人比没有 UTBP 的非洲裔美国人具有更高的静力负荷。教会出席率和基于教会的社会支持都没有减弱个人 UTBP 和分配负荷之间的关系，也没有神圣的控制。我们讨论了我们的研究结果如何有助于阐明非裔美国人的宗教/精神应对的有效性参数及其对刑事司法改革的影响。