Political influences on racial disparities in traffic enforcement practices (original) (raw)
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Race/Ethnicity as the Defining Characteristic of Policing in the U.S
Race, Immigration, and Social Control, 2018
Race/ethnicity is arguably one of the most influential characteristics of social affairs in the U.S. Various forms of racism and racial inequality, such as residential and school segregation, discrimination in employment and access to public services, and profiling in law enforcement and disproportionate minority contact in the criminal justice system, have placed tremendous burdens on racial and ethnic minorities since the early days of American history. The last several decades have witnessed some noteworthy advancement in the social, political, economic, and educational rights and social status of people of color and noticeable changes in the operation of the criminal justice system clearly resulting from the civil rights movement. Some researchers argue that the importance of racial background is diminishing in the daily lives of Americans (Wilson, 1987), including in predicting citizen evaluations of the police (Jesilow, Meyer, & Namazzi, 1995). Others, however, contend that racial inequality remains ordinary rather than aberrational (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). Racial minorities, especially in urban high crime areas, continue to have strained relationship with the police (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2003), and the persisting social distance between Whites and Blacks continues to allow the nation to be 2 Race/Ethnicity as the Defining Characteristic of Policing in the U.S.
International and Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Sciences, 2018
This study assesses the social, political, economic, and traffic-/travel-related predictors of sworn highway patrol and state police strength in the United States between 1981 and 2015. Fixed-effects estimates based on analyses of 1,635 state-years indicate that theoretical accounts centered on racial threat theory, partisan politics, and gendered politics in part explain variation in this outcome. Findings suggest that changes in population density, the tax base, the percentage of the population without a high school degree, violent crime rates, and spending on social welfare at the state level, as well as shifts in local law enforcement strength, also influence state police and patrol organization strength over this period. Surprisingly, fluctuations in the number of state traffic fatalities per million vehicle miles traveled and the number of driver’s licenses per 100,000 state population—two seemingly important traffic-/travel-related factors—have no impact on the rate of state police and patrol officers per 100,000 population.
US law enforcement policy predictors of race-specific police fatalities during 2015–16
PLOS ONE
Mounting evidence suggests that law enforcement organizational factors contribute to higher incidence and racial disparities in police killings. To determine whether agency policies contribute to race-specific civilian fatalities, this exploratory study compared fatality rates among agencies with and without selected policies expected to reduce killings. A cross-section of 1085 fatalities in the 2015–2016 The Counted public-use database were matched to 481 agencies in the 2013 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) database. Negative binomial regression estimated incidence rate ratios (IRR) adjusted for agency type, number of officers, percent female personnel, median income, percent with a bachelor’s degree, violent crime rate, and population size, with inference using robust standard errors. Agencies with greater proportions of full-time personnel (range 43–100%) had lower rates of all (IRR = 0.85; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.77–0.93) and non-White c...
Race, drugs and policing: Understanding disparities in drug delivery arrests
2005
KEY WORDS: drug markets, drug arrests, racial disparities, racial inequality, policing This article draws on several unique data sources to assess and explain racial disparity in Seattle's drug delivery arrests. Evidence regarding the racial and ethnic composition of those who deliver any of five serious drugs in that city is compared with the racial and ethnic composition of those arrested for this offense. Our findings indicate that blacks are significantly overrepresented among Seattle's drug delivery arrestees. Several organizational practices explain racial disparity in these arrests: law enforcement's focus on crack offenders, the priority placed on outdoor drug venues, and the geographic concentration of police resources in racially heterogeneous areas. The available evidence further indicates that these practices are not determined by race-neutral factors such as crime rates or community complaints. Our findings thus indicate that race shapes perceptions of who and what constitutes Seattle's drug problem, as well as the organizational response to that problem.
2015
This study focuses on the interactions among a police officer's racial identity, the racial identity of stopped drivers, and the organizational identity of policing. Utilizing traffic stop data collected by the Florida Highway Patrol during 2000-2009, this study finds that representation of African American and Hispanic troopers improves outcomes for all groups of drivers, by increasing efficiency in searches. All troopers, regardless of race, engage in fewer searches when they are assigned to troops with a higher fraction of racial minority officers. Importantly, we show that this decrease in search activity simultaneously yields higher hit rates, thereby increasing efficiency. Finally, the data reveal that the greatest change in search behavior is by majority officers within troops with higher percentages of minority officers. This suggests that officers modify their behavior to align with the search activities of the organizational identity of the troop they serve in. An increase in efficiency not only reduces unnecessary and often discriminatory searches faced by minority drivers, but it also increases public safety.
Examining Racial Disparities in Drug Arrests
Justice Quarterly, 2013
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Searching for Efficient Enforcement: Officer Characteristics and Racially Biased Policing
Review of Law & Economics, 2007
This study empirically investigates whether racial and ethnic differences in police searches of stopped drivers reflect efficient enforcement or biased policing. Null hypotheses consistent with efficient enforcement are derived from alternative assumptions regarding police objectives: 1) police seek to maximize public safety, and 2) police seek to maximize the hit rate. We use both an outcomes-based non-parametric analysis and a standard benchmarking parametric approach (regression analysis). Both approaches yield the same results: law enforcement officers display both personal and police cultural bias in their propensity to search African American and Latino drivers. African American and Latino status tends to lower the guilt signal required for police suspicion. Further, white officers police differently than their African American and Latino colleagues. White officers are 73 percent of the sworn police force, conduct 88 percent of the searches, and have a hit rate of 20 percent. Latino officers are 11 percent of the sworn labor force, conduct 8 percent of the searches, and have a hit rate of 24 percent. African American officers are 15 percent of the sworn labor force, conduct 4 percent of the searches, and have a hit rate of 26 percent. The preferential treatment of white drivers by police is attenuated with increases in the fraction of racial and ethnic minority residents in the county where the stop occurred.
Policing Different Racial Groups in the United States (2015)
This essay presents a set of findings from the authors' empirical studies of police relations with different racial and ethnic groups in the United States. The findings pertain to the role of race and ethnicity in policing practices and in citizens' perceptions of and encounters with the police. The data are derived from multiple levels (national, city, neighborhood) and both qualitative and quantitative findings are presented. Comparisons are made between three key groups in the United States: whites, blacks, and Hispanics. The essay concludes with a consideration of policy implications related to the findings.
The Impact of Race on Policing and Arrests*
The Journal of Law and Economics, 2001
Race has long been recognized as playing a critical role in policing. In spite of this awareness, there has been little previous research that attempts to quantitatively analyze the impact of officer race on tangible outcomes. In this paper, we examine the relationship between the racial composition of a city's police force and the racial patterns of arrests. Increases in the number of minority police are associated with significant increases in arrests of whites but have little impact on arrests of nonwhites. Similarly, more white police increase the number of arrests of nonwhites but do not systematically affect the number of white arrests. These patterns are particularly striking for minor offenses. Understanding the reasons for this empirical regularity and the consequent impact on crime is an important subject for future research. Race is a polarizing feature in American society. Nowhere is this more evident than in the criminal justice system. African Americans, who comprise 12 percent of the U.S. population, account for 47 percent of felony convictions and 54 percent of prison admissions. Studies suggest that one-third of African-American males aged 20-29 are under the supervision of the criminal justice system on any given day. 1 Minority communities are often suspicious of and hostile toward the criminal justice system in general and police in particular. 2 * We would like to thank Dhammika Dharmapala, Lawrence Katz, Rob Sampson, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the Columbia Law School, Haas School of Business, National Bureau of Economic Research summer institute, Stanford Law School, and University of Southern California Law School for comments and suggestions. We would also like to thank Ron Edwards, chief of the Research and Technical Information Branch of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for his cooperation in providing some of the data used. Michael Friedlander, Connie Taylor, and Justin Wood provided truly exemplary research assistance.