The Irrelevance of Innocence: Ethnoracial Context, Occupational Differences in Policing, and Tickets Issued in Error

Abstract

“The Irrelevance of Innocence” is a case study of Chicago that focuses on parking tickets that are written under false pretenses. We leverage multiple data sets against one another to demonstrate that more than one in eight tickets over a six-year span were written under conditions when restrictions did not apply. Then, we situate these findings within a multilevel framework to answer three questions: (1) Are errored tickets more likely to be issued in neighborhoods with higher proportions of Black or Latinx residents? (2) Are errored tickets more likely to be issued by patrol officers as opposed to parking enforcement officers? and (3) Does ethnoracial composition moderate the relationship between ticketing authorities and errored tickets? The implications of our findings (1) quantitatively trouble the ontological assumptions of data that are defined from a policing standpoint and (2) underscore an adjudicative process that routinely sanctions drivers without cause.