Proactive Policing Effects on Crime and Communities (2018) / Chapter Skim
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7 Racial Bias and Disparities in Proactive Policing
7 Racial Bias and Disparities in Proactive Policing
Pages 251-302
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From page 251... ...
In considering these incidents, it is important to note that the origins of policing in the United States are intimately interwoven with the country's history of discrimination against non-White people, particularly toward Black people. From the tracking and kidnapping of enslaved Black people (Campbell, 2012)
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From page 252... ...
Department of Justice findings of racial disparities in outcomes and racial bias in police practices. The purpose of this chapter is to explore whether and to what extent proactive policing policies are deployed in a racially disparate way, if racial differences in implementation are due to racially biased behavior, and if so, what the motivation is for the bias.
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From page 253... ...
But these processes may also operate without conscious awareness. For example, an officer may consciously espouse the idea that Black people are as good as White people and may sincerely believe that, for example, a Black and a White person in the same neighborhood wearing the same type of clothes are equally likely to be carrying weapons (meaning that there is no statistical prediction that would cause biased behavior)
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From page 254... ...
This distrust is discussed in the context of the historical relationship between police and Black communities, through which current perceptions of legitimacy and concerns about racial animus have been forged. The next section discusses reasons that proactive policing may be associated with racial disparities or racially biased behavior.
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From page 255... ...
Given the various sources of racial disparities in police–citizen interactions, how does one assess whether a disparity in outcomes reflects racially biased behavior and then identify the motivation for a bias assessed to exist? The existing empirical research on racially biased behavior answers this question in one of three ways.
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From page 256... ...
One might argue that those at risk were those who were arrested by the police, making the race of the arrested population the relevant benchmark. However, differential arrest rates across races may reflect geographic differences in enforcement or racial bias in arrest decisions of law enforcement.
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From page 257... ...
In this context, an unequal hit rate is frequently interpreted as evidence of animus-driven biased behavior; the assumption here is that statistical prediction (by the police) would generate disparities in treatment that improve the allocation of police resources, whereas racially biased behavior that is not driven by statistical prediction is likely to be driven by animus (although, as noted above, there are other causes of racially biased behavior)
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From page 258... ...
. For example, if Black people are more likely to offend than White people, animus-driven, racially biased treatment by the police may generate higher hit rates for Blacks, equal hit rates across
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From page 259... ...
For the remaining Black suspects, we assume that 10 percent are in the "smells like marijuana" category while 5 percent are in the highest category of external signals: they both smell like marijuana and exhibit furtive movements. The distributions across these categories imply a higher average propensity to carry among Black people; that is, the likelihood of discovering contraband by randomly stopping a Black person is higher than the likelihood of randomly stopping a White person.
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From page 260... ...
In our example, White people who are searched are homogenous in that they all fall in the category of "smells like marijuana," and thus the average hit rate for this group identifies the hit rate for the group just above the evidentiary line drawn by the police. However, for Black people in our hypothetical example the evidentiary line is drawn at furtive movements.
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From page 261... ...
and cannot be used to detect the hit rate at the margin. The numbers in this example can easily be modified to generate either rela tively higher hit rates for Black stops or lower hit rates for Black stops, even when Black people are subject to racially biased treatment.
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From page 262... ...
among members of different groups. With this alternative framing of society's objectives, there are no clear predictions regarding how hit rates should vary in the presence of biased treatment targeted at one demographic group.
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From page 263... ...
. We note that the more frequently measured racial gap between White people and Black people in views about the police is generally unchanged over recent decades and that overall trust in the police as measured by national polls, such as the Gallup Poll, has remained more or less constant over the past 30 years, with between 50 and 60 percent of adult Americans expressing trust in the police (Balz and Clement, 2014; Jones, 2015)
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From page 264... ...
For example, a recent survey of police officers conducted by the Pew Research Center (Morin et al., 2017) found that 27 percent of White officers, but 69 percent of Black officers, said that the protests that followed fatal encounters between police and Black people were motivated to at least some extent by a genuine desire to hold police accountable, whereas 92 percent of White officers, but only 29 percent of Black officers, said that the country has made the changes needed to ensure equal rights for Black people.
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From page 265... ...
Third, in this account the committee has sought to highlight how the structure of criminal justice policies, both in the past and today, can have the effect of both creating and perpetuating racial inequality in the absence of explicit racial animus or racially biased behavior. Thus, while some policies might plausibly be considered to be grounded in "race neutral" reasons, it is critical to understand that these policies can have important negative economic, social, and health impacts on non-White people in society.
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From page 266... ...
Specifically, Black people were permitted to travel to town, to work, and to shop, but they had to leave "before the sun went down" (Loewen, 2005)
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From page 267... ...
. This produced a perverse incentive for states to arrest individuals from vulnerable populations -- overwhelmingly Black people -- to serve as revenue engines for the state (Larsen, 2016; Lichtenstein, 1993)
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From page 268... ...
In that incident, members of the Neshoba County Sheriff's office and a Philadelphia, Mississippi, police officer were eventually convicted by federal prosecutors for conspiring with members of the Ku Klux Klan and others to murder three civil rights workers who had gone to Philadelphia to register Black voters in the summer of 1964. Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice Contact Driven by Federal Policy This active resistance by law enforcement to the Civil Rights Movement coincided with federal government policies that expanded the physical presence of officers in places where many Black people lived, resulting in greater entanglement of Black people in the criminal justice systems of states and cities.
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From page 269... ...
First, Black people were arrested for drug use in proportions, as a percentage of group population, that were much higher than survey data on drug use would predict. By the early 1990s, Black adults made up only 13 percent of drug users (according to survey data)
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From page 270... ...
. While this link has not been conclusively and explicitly proven, the 3 Based on the 2014 American Community Survey, 20 percent of Black people versus 7.6 percent of White people live in cities with more than 250,000 residents (Ruggles et al., 2015)
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From page 271... ...
. In summary, while there have been important changes in the scope for racial bias and animus in policing, with respect to the impact of proactive policing on racial bias and disparate outcomes, law enforcement in the United States does not start with a clean slate.
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From page 272... ...
272 TABLE 7-1 Racial/Ethnic Composition of Law Enforcement in the United States Panel A: Minority Representation Among Local Police Officers, 1987–2013, from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics Survey Year Non-Hispanic White Non-Hispanic Black Non-Hispanic Other Hispanic Non-White (Total) 1987 0.85 0.09 0.01 0.05 0.15 1990 0.83 0.11 0.01 0.05 0.17 1993 0.81 0.11 0.02 0.06 0.19 1997 0.79 0.12 0.02 0.08 0.22 2000 0.77 0.12 0.03 0.08 0.23 2003 0.76 0.12 0.03 0.09 0.24 2007 0.75 0.12 0.03 0.10 0.25 2013 0.73 0.12 0.04 0.12 0.27 Panel B: Racial and Ethnic Composition of Police Officers and Detectives, 1950–2015, Tabulated from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples Year Non-Hispanic White Non-Hispanic Black Non-Hispanic Other Hispanic Non-White (Total)
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From page 273... ...
Panel C: Racial and Ethnic Composition of Sheriffs, Bailiffs, Correctional Officers and Jailers, 1950–2015, Tabulated from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Samples Year Non-Hispanic White Non-Hispanic Black Non-Hispanic Other Hispanic Non-White (Total) 1950 0.95 0.01 0.00 0.03 0.05 1960 0.94 0.03 0.00 0.02 0.06 1970 0.92 0.05 0.01 0.02 0.08 1980 0.79 0.15 0.01 0.05 0.21 1990 0.77 0.15 0.02 0.06 0.23 2000 0.69 0.20 0.03 0.08 0.31 2010 0.69 0.19 0.03 0.09 0.31 2015 0.67 0.18 0.04 0.11 0.33 SOURCES: Panel A data from Reaves (2015)
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From page 274... ...
The historical and contemporary social context of policing plays a role in how communities perceive police behavior, and one cannot assess the motivation for or effect of disparate treatment or racially biased behavior without recognizing that proactive policing is nested in the more general historical context of racial disparities and bias in policing. This context must include attention to the experiences of Black and other non-White Americans, with due consideration to the impacts on Black and other nonWhite communities.
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From page 275... ...
As discussed in later sections, only a limited body of research has empirically tested the causal connections between these potential mechanisms and changes in racial disparities and racial bias. First, if non-White people are more likely to commit criminal offences, racial disparities in police-citizen interactions are likely to occur.
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From page 276... ...
This will likely result in more contact with the police, and thus an increased probability of being identified as a high-activity offender for Black people relative to otherwise identical White people. EVIDENCE FROM PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE ON RACIAL BIAS IN POLICING This section attempts to evaluate the contribution contemporary psychological science can make to understanding the role of racial bias in proactive policing.
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From page 277... ...
. Although overt expressions of biased behavior have declined in society and among police, racial animus has not disappeared.
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From page 278... ...
suggests that participants associate Black people (more than White people) with negativity.
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From page 279... ...
Questions have been raised about whether certain aspects of the measurement procedure (e.g., the cognitive demands of the task or the differential salience of categories, like Black and White) , can create an illusion of biased behavior, racial animus, or the unconscious process psychologists refer to as "implicit bias" on the IAT, even when the participant does not harbor negative views toward Black people.
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From page 280... ...
, some of the individuals had facial features that were more typical of Black people in general (i.e., similar to the stereotype of a Black face, e.g., darker skin tone) , whereas others had facial features that were less typical of Black people and more typical of White people (i.e., similar to the stereotype of a White face, e.g., lighter skin tone)
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From page 281... ...
suggested that much of the apparent effect of a suspect's race on police use of force can be explained by the neighborhood in which the encounter took place. This result suggests that discrepancies in behavior (racial bias)
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From page 282... ...
of the work on this domain. In laboratory experiments, several researchers have used video game simulations to explore racial bias in the decision to shoot.
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From page 283... ...
. Risk and Protective Factors for Bias in Proactive Policing In addition to innovations regarding the measurement and effect of dispositional factors that reflect internal characteristics of the individual, there is a sizable psychological literature identifying situations that tend to provoke racially biased behaviors, even absent negative racial attitudes, as well as situations that reduce the likelihood that racial animus will lead to biased behavior or (racially)
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From page 284... ...
and situational (related to the environment) factors that are associated with higher levels of racially biased behavior.
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From page 285... ...
A third dispositional risk factor identified by social psychologists is executive function, which is a kind of flexible cognitive capacity that allows people to pay attention, follow rules, and use different intentional strategies. Unlike social dominance orientation and aversive racism, executive function is a protective factor for biased behavior.
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From page 286... ...
. In summary, while not yet specifically tested among police, social psychological research on risk factors for racially biased behavior suggest that police officers who are (1)
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From page 287... ...
However, some risk factors for biased behavior may also be common to features of proactive policing. This suggests the importance of more direct research on the dispositional and situational factors that may influence whether police officers make biased decisions.
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From page 288... ...
Comparisons of Racial Composition of Police–Citizen Interactions to Alternative Population Benchmarks There are a number of studies that employ census data, driver's license data, or both to compare the racial composition of those stopped by the police to the racial composition of the local resident population, to the population of areas near roadways, or to the current population of drivers. A 2003 study of Minnesota compared the racial composition of police stops and searches to the racial composition of the driving-age population in 65 municipalities throughout the state and demonstrated that in nearly all localities, Black people were overrepresented and White people underrepresented among those stopped and searched by the police (Institute on
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From page 289... ...
the proportion of auto accidents involving Black people. The findings showed higher stop rates relative to the benchmarks for Black drivers, with the disproportionality in stop rates increasing with the relative size of the Black driving population in each locality.
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From page 290... ...
The study also identified a small set of officers who stopped non-White people at very high rates relative to the constructed internal benchmark; it also identified cross-borough heterogeneity in the degree to which non-White people were overrepresented among those stopped by the police. Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss (2007)
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From page 291... ...
for Black people and Hispanic people relative to White people (Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss, 2007) , the interpretation of which will be discussed in detail in the next section.
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From page 292... ...
The authors also found close correspondence between the racial composition of drug arrests and the composition of suspect descriptions in 911 calls. Based on these findings, the authors contested the conclusion that the enforcement focus on crack cocaine or some other form of racialized framing of the local drug problem was driving racial disparities in arrests.
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From page 293... ...
. Given that they found heavy overrepresentation of Black people among drug arrests, they then asked what policy and practice factors may be behind these disparities.
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From page 294... ...
provided one of the earliest outcome test studies of police behavior. The authors employed data on police stops and searches by the Maryland State Police occurring along Interstate 95 during the 1990s and compared hit rates, using various definitions of contraband and guilt, by the race/ethnicity of the searched drivers.
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From page 295... ...
However, the authors did find higher search rates for Black people, followed by Hispanic people and then White people, and lower hit rates for Hispanic people and Black people relative to White people. White officers searched all groups at the highest rates, but the differences by motorist race were largest for White officers, as were the hit rate differentials.
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From page 296... ...
analyzed racial disparities in the composition of police stops in New York City due to suspicion of criminal possession of a weapon. The authors used data on 760,000 such SQF incidents occurring between 2008 and 2012 to assess the productivity of such stops in terms of weapons recovered, racial disparities in productivity as measured by average hit rates, the degree to which these disparities are ex
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From page 297... ...
Several findings resulted from this study. First, average hit rates were lower for Black people relative to White people, and there were large differences in the distribution of ex ante likelihood by race.
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From page 298... ...
Because none of these areas in the psychological literature has tested how the observed laboratory effects may or not may not generalize to street-level policing decisions, the evidence from this field is not sufficient for the committee to draw any conclusions regarding its specific impacts on proactive policing. Nevertheless, the general evidence for the continuing existence of both negative racial attitudes, whether conscious or unacknowledged, and racially biased behavior support the importance of efforts to study the role of racial bias in contemporary police behavior generally and in proactive policing in particular.
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From page 299... ...
For example, should the Seattle police focus more on crack cocaine, which tends to be sold and used by Black people, or heroin, which is relatively more likely to be used and sold by White people? Although research that tests for differential outcomes of police–citizen interactions is potentially informative regarding the disparate impacts of proactive policing efforts, research on this issue tends to be undertheorized or defines the objectives of police so narrowly as to limit the ability to draw broad inferences from existing empirical findings.
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From page 300... ...
, the committee is unaware of any estimates of the costs of racial disparities in criminal justice contact, the costs of racial profiling or other racially biased behaviors by police, or the cost of racial animus in policing. For example, if place-based policing reduces the probability that most non-White people are subject to racial profiling but increases the rate at which non-White people in certain crime hot spots have unwanted police interactions that are perceived to be racially biased, does this increase or decrease social welfare?
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From page 301... ...
The committee has drawn the following main conclusions regarding racial disparities in proactive policing: CONCLUSION 7-1 There are likely to be large racial disparities in the volume and nature of police–citizen encounters when police target high-risk people or high-risk places, as is common in many proactive policing programs. CONCLUSION 7-2 Existing evidence does not establish conclusively whether, and to what extent, the racial disparities associated with con centrated person-focused and place-based enforcement are indicators of statistical prediction, racial animus, implicit bias, or other causes.
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