Studies

Research on racial bias in policing

“Black and Hispanic [school] girls who receive special education faced the greatest disparities, as they were six times more likely to be referred to law enforcement and seven times more likely to be arrested than White girls who receive special education."

“Even when controlling for relevant factors such as self-reported offence or drug use and alternative explanations, such as presence in the street, we can document that ethnicity still matters for explaining the probability of the most intrusive of these police powers” & “In fact, ethnicity seems to matter more than self-reported offending behaviour for explaining the probability of being stopped and searched."

“We found that Black Canadian and Indigenous people are more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession than White people.” & “The limited evidence available suggests that cannabis use varies little across racial groups in Canada."

“Black female victims were significantly more likely to be portrayed as ‘bad’ people… Stories about White… victims were significantly more likely… to describe the victim as preyed upon by a predator… [and] produce sympathetic overall narratives."

“Chicago PD has kept… a gang database since the 1980s… People can be added to the database at the discretion of Chicago police … who are not required to provide any evidence of gang affiliation or criminal activity… More than 95% are black or Latinx."

“There does not appear to be any evidence that increased BLM protest activity had an impact on … crime [or] officer assaults.” & “Increased protests decrease the number of fatal interactions of Black individuals with police in the subsequent month."

“Focusing first on high-crime areas, in majority black and majority Hispanic block groups … the increase in [police] stops in the week after a homicide is much greater than in all other block groups."

“Consistent with the racial-threat hypothesis, cities with a higher proportion of Black residents had a higher number of police-caused homicides.” & “Measures of minority representation [on police forces] had no significant influence on levels of police violence."