Studies

Research on racial bias in policing

“At some point, the disparities become self-fulfilling as the increased rates of incarceration of minority people will result in increased offending … with disparities in imprisonment becoming a function of disparities in offending."

“Fram[ing] excessive force as a problem that derives from rogue police officers … obscures the structural dimensions of police violence and ignores … that conscious racial animosity likely accounts for a small percentage of racially-inflicted police conduct."

“The racial disparity that exists in prison sentencing is, for the most part, already in place at arrest. Therefore, research on the disproportionately high minority representation in prison should focus on understanding arrest practices by law enforcement."

“This numbers-driven system… leads to the intensification of existing inequities through differential police scrutiny… In 2010, 86 percent of those arrested in New York City for marijuana possession were black or Latino, but… whites use marijuana at higher rates."

“Whites’ fear of crime increase linearly as the relative size of the black population increases [which, for minority black areas, is then]… translated into additional police officers… These findings emerge net of a wide array of control variables."

“We report with confidence that the results are not mixed. Race matters… Holding all other situational factors constant, the arrest risk on average is 30 percent higher for racial minorities than for Whites."

“The Chicago case illustrates that predictive crime mapping does not incur more precise applications of police force but rather legitimizes the widespread criminalization of racialized districts."

“Each additional police killing of an unarmed black American was associated with 0.14 additional poor mental health days among black American respondents… Mental health impacts were not observed among white respondents."

“Militarized police units are more often deployed in areas with high concentrations of African Americans, even after adjusting for local crime rates and other community traits. But I find no firm evidence that SWAT teams lower an agency’s violent crime rate."