Race, Street Life, and Policing: Implications for Racial Profiling

Abstract

Scholarship is divided over whether youth from marginalized populations are stopped and searched by police primarily due to their illegal behaviours (functionalism), marginalized status (conflict theory), or both. We address this debate by comparing the police interactions experienced by a sample of high school students (N = 3,393) living at home with a sample of youth (N = 396) who have left home and are residing in shelters or on the streets of Toronto, Ontario. Logistic regression analysis demonstrates that after controlling for demographic and behavioural factors, black high school students are more likely than white high school students to report being stopped and searched by the police multiple times; this indicates that they are the victims of racially biased policing. In contrast, black and white street youth are equally likely to report being stopped and searched by the police on multiple occasions. We suggest that this is because all street youth, regardless of race, take part in high levels of deviant behaviour, which attracts police attention. We conclude that consensus theory is appropriate for explaining police stops and searches of street youth, whereas conflict theory is appropriate for explaining police stops and searches of black high school students.