Studies

Research on racial bias in policing

“Black [Canadian] youth are more likely to be charged and less likely to be cautioned than White youth. … Racial discrimination may play a role in how police select youth to be diverted from the formal court system for minor offenses in Canada."

“Most white Americans believe racism is yesterday’s dragon, valiantly slain during the civil rights era… This, in turn, greatly frustrates efforts to mobilize support for policies aimed at combating continuing racial injustice."

“When asked to what degree various racial groups are ‘prone to violence,’ whites rank people of color as more violence-prone than their own race…. Whites … significantly overestimate the proportion of crime committed by blacks and Latinos."

Same PNAS paper fails to control for population, demographic, and suicidality rates. “Contrary to [Johnson et al.’s] claim, their data are entirely consistent with the public perception that young male victims of fatal use of force are disproportionally Black."

A PNAS paper finding no racial bias confuses (i) probability of black person being shot by police with (ii) probability of shooting victim being black. “Johnson et al.’s analysis cannot recover these shooting rates because all observations in the data involve shootings."

“Recent work on race and policing, including some by public administration scholars, has tested the community violence hypothesis but has failed to find evidence that violent crime rates correlate with police-involved homicides of Black citizens."

“What is self-evident is that the potential for racialised policing to become hardwired, codified and concealed within police and law enforcement technology tools is alarmingly high, increasing further the reality of racialised criminalisation."