Studies

Research on racial bias in policing

“Implicit and explicit bias in policing are important problems that need to be addressed. … However, the contemporary focus on implicit and explicit biases obscures another significant contributor to police violence: legal doctrine."

“The contemporary constitutional law framework for police violence [‘framing it as a series of…individual disputes’] is part of the web of law … that enables police violence to remain an ingrained … form of structural harm that communities of color are subjected to."

“Being older and more conservative correspond with more support for police militarization, whereas being Black reduces support for militarization.” & “Opposition to militarization…cannot…be reduced to anti-police mentalities… They are largely a function of legitimacy."

“Unraveling how and why racialized crime management became a political priority alongside urban crisis and changing residential property regimes is essential for theorizing contemporary crises in policing."

“White individuals…tend to view criticism of police…as threats to their…dominant status.” & “White youth who identified as Republican consistently reported more positive perceptions of law enforcement than [those] who identify as Democratic."

“Algorithms are capable of racism.” & “Machine learning endows an algorithm with the ability to learn, mimic, and refine patterns that exist in the real world. In … policing, machine learning allows an algorithm to associate race and criminality, and thereby discriminate."

“The two studies provide[] compelling evidence that blacks in highly segregated cities experience greater exposure to police violence… Large cities are divided into ‘free-fire zones’ where police violence is prevalent and acceptable, and ‘sleepy hollows’ where it is not."

“Distinguishing between participants who approved of police violence and those who did not… race was the strongest predictor… In addition, participants were twice as likely to attribute disparities… to… less in-born ability to learn …rather than to discrimination."

“US policing as liberal pacification” –> “US policing in particular ends up maintaining and reinforcing substantive intersecting racial and class divisions, precisely because of its avowed formal neutrality."