Racial Disparities In Police Research Articles

“When the Cruiser Lights Come On”: Using the Science of Bias & Culture to Combat Racial Disparities in Policing

Abstract In this essay, we highlight the interplay between individuals' psychological processes and sociocultural systems in producing and maintaining racial bias. We use a conceptual tool we call the culture cycle to map these dynamics, and illustrate them with research and in-depth examples from our work reducing racial disparities in routine policing in Oakland, California. We feature the most common police encounter – the vehicle stop – and highlight evidence-based interventions we developed both to reduce the frequency of vehicle stops and mitigate racial disparities in stops. Throughout, we draw on our expertise in the social psychology of bias, culture, and inequality, as well as our experiences building research-driven partnerships with public- and private-sector leaders, to inform organizational and societal change.

Disrupting the Effects of Implicit Bias: The Case of Discretion & Policing

Abstract Police departments tend to address operational challenges with training approaches, and implicit bias in policing is no exception. However, psychological scientists have found that implicit biases are very difficult to reduce in any lasting, meaningful way. Because they are difficult to change, and nearly impossible for the decision-maker to recognize, training to raise awareness or teach corrective strategies is unlikely to succeed. Recent empirical assessments of implicit bias trainings have shown, at best, no effect on racial disparities in officers' actions in the field. In the absence of effective training, a promising near-term approach for reducing racial disparities in policing is to reduce the frequency of actions most vulnerable to the influence of bias. Specifically, actions that allow relatively high discretion are most likely to be subject to bias-driven errors. Several cases across different policing domains reveal that when discretion is constrained in stop-and-search decisions, the impact of racial bias on searches markedly declines.

Driving Change: Evaluating Connecticut's Collaborative Approach to Reducing Racial Disparities in Policing

Driving Change: Evaluating Connecticut's Collaborative Approach to Reducing Racial Disparities in Policing

The geography of (un)reasonable suspicion: Rethinking causes of racial disparities in police stops

AbstractIn Illinois vs. Wardlow (2000), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that presence in a “high‐crime” area is one factor that police can consider when establishing reasonable suspicion to justify a Terry stop. Some legal scholars argue that through this decision the Court propagated inequity in police stops by setting a lower evidentiary standard for establishing reasonable suspicion in neighborhoods with greater numbers Black residents, which are more likely than White neighborhoods to be considered crime hot spots. To assess these claims, I analyze pedestrian stop data from the Chicago Police Department for the years 2016 and 2017. Using spatial regression techniques, I evaluate relationships between neighborhood measures of Black disadvantage, police stop justifications, and “hit rates” of stops. The results suggest that reasonable suspicion is uniquely constructed in disadvantaged Black neighborhoods but that this does not result in significantly different enforcement rates. Based on these results, I argue that policing scholars must reconsider sources of inequity in policing and, in particular, consider the role of the law in shaping these outcomes.

A Behavioural Theory of Discrimination in Policing

Abstract A large economic literature studies whether racial disparities in policing are explained by animus or by beliefs about group crime rates. But what if these beliefs are incorrect? We analyse a model where officers form beliefs using crime statistics, but do not properly account for the fact that they will detect more crime in more heavily policed communities. This creates a feedback loop where officers over-police groups that they (incorrectly) believe exhibit high crime rates. This inferential mistake can exacerbate discrimination even among officers with no animus and who sincerely believe that disparities are driven by real differences in crime rates.

Racial Bias in Police Traffic Stops: White Residents’ County-Level Prejudice and Stereotypes Are Related to Disproportionate Stopping of Black Drivers

Racial disparities in policing are well documented, but the reasons for such disparities are often debated. In the current research, we weighed in on this debate using a regional-level bias framework: We investigated the link between racial disparities in police traffic stops and regional-level racial bias, employing data from more than 130 million police traffic stops in 1,413 U.S. counties and county-level measures of racial bias from more than 2 million online respondents. Compared with their population share in county demographics, Black drivers were stopped at disproportionate rates in the majority of counties. Crucially, disproportionate stopping of Black drivers was higher in counties with higher levels of racial prejudice by White residents (rs = .07−.36). Furthermore, county-level aggregates of White people’s threat-related stereotypes were less consistent in predicting disproportionate stopping (rs = .00−.19). These observed relationships between regional-level bias and racial disparities in policing highlight the importance of the context in which police operate.

Driving While Black and Brown in Vermont: Can Race Data Analysis Contribute to Reform?

Many states now require law enforcement to collect race data on traffic stops, but there has been little research on the use of that data to inform public policy or reform efforts at the agency level. This article addresses that lacuna by presenting results from the first statewide analysis of Vermont traffic stop data. Racial threat theory, a subset of stratification theory, would predict that policing in a predominantly white state like Vermont would exhibit lower racial disparities than states with a more racially diverse population because the “threat” to white dominance is less. The results contradict that prediction. Vermont, despite its reputation as a liberal state, is not different from other states in exhibiting wide racial disparities in policing. And yet, analysis and dissemination of race data in policing, by providing an evidentiary basis for citizen claims of racial bias, contributed to action on the part of the state legislature and government to address racial discrimination not only in policing but also in the broader criminal justice system. We report on those reform efforts and on the actions taken by three reform-minded law enforcement agencies to reduce and eliminate unjustifiable racial disparities in policing.

Racial Disparities In Stop and Frisk Distributions by the Philadelphia Police Department

The rates of police stops of Black and White pedestrians vary greatly in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Using a propensity score design, this study matches the rates of stops using stop data characteristics from the Philadelphia Police Department to further analyze racial disparities in police stops. Re-weighting allows to better analyze stop distributions by assessing the difference of frisk rates between Blacks and Whites. The purpose of comparing the stops in similar situations is that if the location of the stop is controlled for, along with the gender, year, and time of day of the stop occurrence, the explainatory variable left to be a plausible reason in stop rate differences between the groups is race. Black pedestrians in Philadelphia are disproportionally frisked more than White pedestrians, 15% vs. 10%. However, Philadelphia police are more likely to recover contraband from frisked Black pedestrians.

Fines, Fees, Forfeitures, and Disparities: A Link Between Municipal Reliance on Fines and Racial Disparities in Policing

We investigate a possible linkage between municipal reliance on fines, fees, and forfeitures as a revenue source and policing behavior. With a dataset of four million traffic stops made by North Carolina municipalities, we demonstrate that a regular reliance on fines, fees, and forfeitures has powerful, predictable, and racially distinct impacts on black and white drivers, and that fiscal stress exacerbates these differences. A greater regular reliance on fines, fees, and forfeitures is linked to a decrease in the probability of white, but not black, drivers being searched; and increased odds of finding contraband among those white drivers who are searched, but no such change for black drivers. We validate the North Carolina tests with aggregate analyses of municipalities across four states.

Representative bureaucracy and impartial policing

AbstractRepresentative bureaucracy theory expects minority bureaucrats to advance the interests of minority citizens. Yet, little attention has been given to the variation in the acceptability, incentives and risks of representation across bureaucratic domains. Analysis of over two million police vehicle stops from four different US departments reveals that African American police officers do not treat African Americans preferentially, yet they mitigate existing racial disparities in policing. Compared with White officers, African Americans seem less disposed to use their discretion. They are disinclined to search drivers, yet inclined to cite them, displaying comparatively low disparities across social groups. These findings extend to pure traffic violations, and are robust to entropy balancing reweighting. We provisionally attribute African American police officers' impartial policing style to their compelling need to display their performance, and avoid blame, amidst intra‐organizational pressures and risks ensuing from the political salience of the police's clash with minority communities.

A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States.

We assessed racial disparities in policing in the United States by compiling and analysing a dataset detailing nearly 100 million traffic stops conducted across the country. We found that black drivers were less likely to be stopped after sunset, when a 'veil of darkness' masks one's race, suggesting bias in stop decisions. Furthermore, by examining the rate at which stopped drivers were searched and the likelihood that searches turned up contraband, we found evidence that the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was lower than that for searching white drivers. Finally, we found that legalization of recreational marijuana reduced the number of searches of white, black and Hispanic drivers-but the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was still lower than that for white drivers post-legalization. Our results indicate that police stops and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias and point to the value of policy interventions to mitigate these disparities.

Racial Biases in Officers’ Decisions to Frisk Are Amplified for Black People Stopped Among Groups Leading to Similar Biases in Searches, Arrests, and Use of Force

Violent encounters between police and Black people have spurred debates about how race affects officer decision-making. We propose that racial disparities in police–civilian interactions are amplified when police interact with Black civilians who are encountered in groups. To test this possibility, we analyzed New York City stop and frisk data for over 2 million police stops. Results revealed that Black (vs. White) people were more likely to be frisked, searched, arrested, and have force used against them. Critically, these racial disparities were more pronounced for people stopped in groups (vs. alone): Being stopped in a group led to a 1.7% increase in racial disparities for frisks, a 1% increase for searches, a 0.3% increase for arrests, and a 1.7% increase for use of force. Moreover, these disparities held even when we controlled for a potential proxy of effective policing: discovery of illegal contraband. We conclude that groups amplify racial disparities in policing.

Resolution of apparent paradoxes in the race-specific frequency of use-of-force by police

Analyses of racial disparities in police use-of-force against unarmed individuals are central to public policy interventions; however, recent studies have come to apparently paradoxical findings concerning the existence and form of such disparities. Although anti-black racial disparities in U.S. police shootings have been consistently documented at the population level, new work has suggested that racial disparities in encounter-conditional use of lethal force by police are reversed relative to expectations, with police being more likely to: (1) shoot white relative to black individuals, and (2) use non-lethal as opposed to lethal force on black relative to white individuals. Encounter- and use-of-force-conditional results, however, can be misleading if the rates with which police encounter and use non-lethal force vary across officers and depend on suspect race. We find that all currently described empirical patterns in the structuring of police use-of-force—including the “reversed” racial disparities in encounter-conditional use of lethal force—are explainable under a generative model in which there are consistent and systemic biases against black individuals. If even a small subset of police more frequently encounter and use non-lethal force against black individuals than white individuals, then analyses of pooled encounter-conditional data can fail to correctly detect racial disparities in the use of lethal force. In more technical terms, statistical assessments of racial disparities conditioned on problematic intermediate variables, such as encounters, which might themselves be a causal outcome of racial bias, can produce misleading inferences. Population-level measures of use-of-force by police are more robust indicators of the overall severity of racial disparities than encounter-conditional measures—since the later neglect the differential morbidity and mortality arising from differential encounter rates. As such, population-level measures should be used when evaluating the local-level public health implications of racial disparities in police use-of-force. Research on encounter-conditional use-of-force by police can also fruitfully contribute to public policy discussions, since population-level measures alone cannot address whether racial disparities are driven by disparities in encounters or disparities in use-of-force conditional on encounters. Tests for racial biases in the encounter-conditional use of lethal force, however, must account for individual-level variation across officers in terms of race-specific encounter rates or risk falling to Simpson’s paradox.

A Communitarian Framework for Evaluating No-Trespass Policies

This article critically examines housing authorities’ use of no-trespass policies, or NTPs, as crime reduction measures. NTPs allow housing authorities to ban visitors from public housing properties based on low-level offenses, and to enforce those bans by arresting violators for criminal trespass. Critiques of NTPs have traditionally been advanced through the lens of individual rights, while communitarians have defended the policies based on their crime-reduction benefits. This article argues for a communitarian framework for evaluating NTPs, but suggests that the crime-reduction benefits of NTPs must be weighed against their potential to create barriers to reentry and to perpetuate racial disparities in policing. This communitarian perspective is justified by the legislative framework through which housing authorities developed as institutions—in particular, the United States Housing Act of 1937 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968—which envisioned housing authorities as agents of community improvement and inclusion.

Beyond Profiling: The Institutional Sources of Racial Disparities in Policing

AbstractAmerican policing faces a crisis of legitimacy. A key source of this crisis is a widespread police practice commonly endorsed by police leaders to fight crime. This is the investigatory stop, used to check out people who seem suspicious and to seize illegal drugs and guns and make arrests. Using data from an original scientific survey of drivers in the Kansas City metropolitan area, the authors show that racial disparities in police stops are concentrated in investigatory vehicle stops. In these stops, but not others, officers disproportionately stop African Americans and question and search them. The overwhelming majority of people stopped in this way are innocent, and the experience causes psychological harm and erodes trust in and cooperation with the police. Many of the most controversial police shootings during the past two years occurred in these stops. Reforming this practice is an essential step toward restoring trust in the police.

Perceived Threat Associated with Police Officers and Black Men Predicts Support for Policing Policy Reform.

Racial disparities in policing and recent high-profile incidents resulting in the deaths of Black men have ignited a national debate on policing policies. Given evidence that both police officers and Black men may be associated with threat, we examined the impact of perceived threat on support for reformed policing policies. Across three studies we found correlational evidence that perceiving police officers as threatening predicts increased support for reformed policing practices (e.g., limiting the use of lethal force and matching police force demographics to those of the community). In contrast, perceiving Black men as threatening predicted reduced support for policing policy reform. Perceived threat also predicted willingness to sign a petition calling for police reform. Experimental evidence indicated that priming participants to associate Black men with threat could also reduce support for policing policy reform, and this effect was moderated by internal motivation to respond without prejudice. Priming participants to associate police officers with threat did not increase support for policing policy reform. Results indicate that resistance to policing policy reform is associated with perceiving Black men as threatening. Moreover, findings suggest that publicizing racially charged police encounters, which may conjure associations between Black men and threat, could reduce support for policing policy reform.

Protecting Whiteness

Focusing on intergroup anti-non-White bias in the criminal justice system, little attention is given to how Whites may additionally be protected from negative police treatment. This study examines intragroup bias via perceived suspect phenotypic racial stereotypicality (e.g., how strongly members possess physical features typical of their racial group) on severity of police use of force. It is hypothesized that the Whiter one appears, the more the suspect will be protected from police force. Internal use of force case files from a large police department were coded for severity of police force, and suspects’ booking photographs were scored for phenotypic racial stereotypicality. Regression analyses confirmed that police used less force with highly stereotypical Whites, and this protective effect was stronger than the effect for non-Whites. Results suggest that intragroup bias is a protective factor for Whites, but not for non-Whites, providing an additional route through which racial disparities in policing operate.

Henry Louis Gates and Racial Profiling: What's the Problem?

A string of recent studies has documented significant racial disparities in police stops, searches, and arrests across the country. The issue of racial profiling, however, did not receive national attention until the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., at his home in Cambridge. This raises three questions: First, did Sergeant Crowley engage in racial profiling when he arrested Professor Gates? Second, why does it take the wrongful arrest of a respected member of an elite community to focus the attention of the country? Third, why is racial profiling so pervasive in American policing?The answers to these questions are interconnected: they turn on the fact that racial profiling is just another form of statistical discrimination and that, today, we all embrace statistical discrimination as efficient and justified whenever there are group-based differences in behavior or fact disparities. We have all become, today, statistical discriminators. This answer, though, points to a solution in the racial profiling quandary, because statistical discrimination is misguided in dynamic situations where there are feedback effects. In policing, it is counter-productive to the law enforcement objective of reducing crime. Like Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres’s metaphor of the miner’s canary, the racial dimension of racial profiling is what troubles us in the arrest of Henry Louis Gates. But, just like the canary whose distress is a warning that the air in the mine is poisoned, the troubling aspect of race in the debate over racial profiling points to the larger problems of statistical discrimination writ large.

Bias in White: A Longitudinal Natural Experiment Measuring Changes in Discrimination

Many professions are plagued by disparities in service delivery. Racial disparities in policing, mortgage lending, and healthcare are some notable examples. Because disparities can result from a myriad of mechanisms, crafting effective disparity mitigation policies requires knowing which mechanisms are active and which are not. In this study we can distinguish whether one mechanism—statistical discrimination—is a primary explanation for racial disparities in physicians' treatment of patients. In a longitudinal natural experiment using repeated quasi-audit studies of medical students, we test for within-cohort changes in disparities from medical student behaviors as they interact with white and black patient actors. We find significant increases in medical students' disparate behaviors by patient race between their first and second years of medical school. This finding is inconsistent with statistical discrimination predictions and challenges the idea that statistical discrimination is primarily responsible for racial disparities in patient care. This paper was accepted by Jesper Sørensen, organizations.

DRIVING WHILE BLACK: BIAS PROCESSES AND RACIAL DISPARITY IN POLICE STOPS*

We estimate the degree of racial disparity in police vehicular stops separately for local and state police in North Carolina in the year 2000. We introduce four mechanisms that might produce racial disparities in police stops—racial profiling, race sensitive police deployment, cognitive bias and stereotyping, and prejudice. We then model the relative odds of police vehicle stops as a function of race, driving behavior, and other demographic statuses separately by police organization type, with controls for omitted variable bias at both the driver and spatial level. We find only weak evidence of racial disparity in stops by officers of the state highway patrol but stronger evidence in those made by local police officers.