Traffic Enforcement Through the Lens of Race: A Sequential Analysis of Post-Stop Outcomes in San Diego, California (original) (raw)
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Racial disparities in traffic stop outcomes are widespread and well documented. Less well understood is how racial disparities may be amplified or muted in different contexts. Here we focus on one such situational factor: whether the initial traffic stop was related to a traffic safety violation or a (broadly defined) investigatory purpose. This is a salient contextual characteristic as stop type relates to different levels of assumed discretion and purpose. While all traffic stops involve some officer discretion, investigatory stops are more easily used as justifications to conduct a search based on an officer's diffuse suspicion; traffic safety stops are more often just what they seem. Using millions of traffic stops from several states, we show that black male drivers are more likely to be searched and less likely to be found with contraband and that this relationship is amplified where the initial stop purpose is investigatory. One implication of this is that one path to all...
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2017
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 22 I.PUBLICLY AVAILABLE DATA ........................................................................................ 26 I.DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS ............................................................................................... 30 II.DISPARITIES IN SEARCH RATES BY RACE ..................................................................... 31 A. Search Rates Among White Drivers........................................................ 31 B. Search Rates Among Black Drivers ......................................................... 33 C. Search Rates Among Hispanic Drivers .................................................. 35 D. Black-White Search Rate Ratios ............................................................... 37 E. Hispanic-White Search Rate Ratios ......................................................... 39 III.A MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS .....
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Many Americans, especially Americans of color, view policing as discriminatory, either by policy and definition or by its day to day application. Thus, comparable to statutes in many other states, the State of Illinois enacted, The Illinois Traffic Stop Statistical Study Act which requires that every State and local law enforcement agency record data relative to traffic stops made within their jurisdiction. The Act further charges the Illinois Department of Transportation to provide statistical summaries (benchmarks) so that statistically significant aberrations in the race of those allegedly involved in traffic stops can be compared and analyzed against the total population traveling through an area to determine whether these discriminatory beliefs are factually founded. This paper discusses the research and legal perspectives involved in designing, defining and distinguishing behavior based on these benchmarks.
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cjcj.org
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