![]() For example, if a police officer decides to stop and frisk Person A (who is Black), but does not stop Person B (who is White), and if the officer bases that decision entirely or in part on race, that behavior would constitute racial bias. Racially Biased Behavior As used in this report, the term racial bias refers to a difference in a person’s behavior that is attributable to the race or ethnicity of another person. For example, Black people may be arrested more frequently in part because they experience greater poverty. A critical point is that these differences can be discussed without assuming that race, per se, gives rise to the observed differences. For example, if in a certain community, Black people experience greater levels of poverty than White people and per capita, Black people are arrested more frequently for violent crime than White people, then these would be racial disparities in poverty and in arrest rates for violent crime. The report uses the term racial disparity to denote outcomes that differ by race or ethnicity. Racial Disparity Racial disparities refer to objective differences that exist in the real world. But before examining the evidence on these questions, we begin by defining and discussing the terminology used throughout the chapter. ![]() 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. Department of Justice findings of racial disparities in outcomes and racial bias in police practices. ![]() There are certainly many examples of such problems in specific police departments, and some police agencies, as we noted in Chapter 3, have entered consent decrees to address U.S. And it is by no means clear that explicit animus-driven biases against non-Whites, or examples of racial animus by the police, are a thing of the past. From this perspective, it is easy to see how the nation’s history is intrinsically linked to misgivings some non-White Americans continue to have about possible police animus and racial bias. Although some of the more egregious historical practices ended a long time ago, others ended later and within the living memory of many Americans-and all are remembered as part of the collective history shared by Black and other non-White communities. The criminalization of Black bodies for the purpose of economic exploitation ( Lichtenstein, 1996), police officers have often been the enforcement arm of both explicitly racist and tacitly discriminatory norms and laws. From the tracking and kidnapping of enslaved Black people ( Campbell, 2012) to the regulation of Black movement ( Loewen, 2005) and 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. ![]() Nonetheless, several recent high-profile incidents of police shootings and other police–citizen interactions caught on camera and viewed widely have made questions regarding basic fairness, racial discrimination, and the excessive use of force of all forms against non-Whites in the United States a pressing national issue. For example, researchers have been studying differential stop and arrest rates across demographic groups-and more generally, racial disparities in criminal justice involvement, offending, and the likelihood of becoming a crime victim-for several decades (see, e.g., Sampson and Lauritsen, 1997 Tonry, 1995). Additionally, because many proactive policing strategies by design increase the volume of interactions between police and the public, such strategies may increase the overall opportunity for problematic interactions that have disparate impacts.Ĭoncerns about the interaction between race and policing are not new. Because these kinds of police contact are associated with at least some forms of what is known as proactive policing, recognition of this reality is an important starting point for this chapter. The high rates at which non-Whites are stopped, questioned, cited, arrested, or injured by the police present some of the most salient criminal justice policy phenomena in the United States ( Kochel, Wilson, and Mastrofski, 2011 Lytle, 2014). Racial Bias and Disparities in Proactive Policing
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