Explaining and Eliminating Racial Profiling (PDF)

 Following notorious cases of violence against minorities perpetrated by police officers, such as the video-taped beating...

 Following notorious cases of violence against minorities perpetrated by police officers, such as the video-taped beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1991 and the shooting of Amadou Diallo in New York in 1999, racially biased policing rose quickly on the national civil rights agenda. By the late 1990s, challenges to racial profiling became a key political goal in the more general movement for racial justice. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the ACLU brought lawsuits against law enforcement agencies across the United States for targeting minority drivers. As a result, many states passed legislation that banned the use of racial profiles and then required officers to record the race of drivers stopped in order to monitor and sanc- tion those who were violating citizens’ civil rights. Today, many jurisdictions continue to collect information on the race composition of vehicle stops and searches to mon- itor and discourage racially biased policing. In places like New Jersey and North Carolina, where the national politics chal- lenging racial profiling were reinforced by local efforts to mon- itor and sanction police, racial disparities in highway patrol stops and searches declined. Our analysis of searches by the North Carolina Highway Patrol shows that these civil rights-based challenges, both national and local, quickly changed police behavior. In 1997, before racial profiling had come under attack, black drivers were four times as likely as white drivers to be subjected to a search by the North Carolina Highway Patrol. Confirming that the high rate of searches represented racial profiling, black among white drivers. In fact, the rates of contraband found in drivers were 33 percent less likely to be found with contraband profiling-based drug searches of minorities are typically lower, compared to white drivers. The next year, as the national and suggesting racial profiling decreases police efficiency. local politics of racial profiling accelerated, searches of black driv- In addition to it being an inefficient police practice, Oper- ers plummeted in North Carolina. By 2000, racial disparities in ation Pipeline violated the assumption of equal protection under searches had been cut in half and the recovery of contraband the law guaranteed through civil rights laws as well as the 14th no longer differed by race, suggesting officers were no longer Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It meant, in other words, racially biased in their decisions to search cars. that just as police forces across the country were learning to curb This isn’t to suggest lawyers’ and activists’ complaints have stopped profiling everywhere. For example, Missouri, which has been col- lecting data since 2000, still has large race disparities in searching practices among its police officers. The most recent data (for 2007) shows blacks were 78 percent more likely than whites to be searched. Hispanics were 118 percent more likely than whites the egregious civil rights violations of the 20th century, the fed- to be searched. Compared to searches of white drivers, con- eral government began training state and local police to tar- traband was found 25 percent less often among black drivers get black and brown drivers for minor traffic violations in hopes and 38 percent less often among Hispanic drivers. of finding more severe criminal offending. The cruel irony is that it was exactly this type of flagrant, state-sanctioned racism how bias is produced the civil rights movement was so successful at outlawing barely Many police-citizen encounters aren’t discretionary, there- a decade earlier. fore even if an officer harbors racial prejudice it won’t influence the decision to stop a car. For example, highway patrol officers, they wanted to know why was he walking through Queens concerned with traffic flow and public safety, spend a good deal Road [at] that time of day,” one black respondent we talked of their time stopping speeders based on radar readings—they to said. often don’t even know the race of the driver until after they pull The “wars” on drugs and crime of the 1980s and 1990s over the car. Still, a number of other factors can produce high encouraged law enforcement to police minority neighborhoods rates of racially biased stops. The first has to do with police patrol aggressively and thus contributed significantly to these prob- patterns, which tend to vary widely by neighborhood. lematic patterns. In focus groups with African American driv- Not unreasonably, communities suffering from higher rates ers in North Carolina, we heard that many were well aware of of crime are often patrolled more aggressively than others. these patterns and their sources. “I think sometimes they tar- Because minorities more often live in these neighborhoods, get... depending on where you live. I think if you live in a side the routine deployment of police in an effort to increase pub- of town... with maybe a lot of crime or maybe break-ins or lic safety will produce more police-citizen contacts and thus a drugs,... I think you are a target there,” one respondent noted. higher rate of stops in those neighborhoods. These stories are mirrored in data on police stops in a mid- A recent study in Charlotte, N.C., confirmed that much of size midwestern city reported in the figure above, right. Here, the race disparity in vehicle stops there can be explained in terms the fewer minorities there are in a neighborhood, the more of patrol patterns and calls for service. Another recent study of often African Americans are stopped. In the whitest neighbor- pedestrian stops in New York yielded similar conclusions—but fur- hoods, African American drivers were stopped at three times ther estimated that police patrol patterns alone lead to African the rate you’d expect given how many of them are on the road. American pedestrians being stopped at three times the rate of In minority communities, minority drivers were still stopped whites. (And, similar to the study of racial profiling of North Car- disproportionally, but at rates much closer to their population olina motorists, contraband was recovered from white New York- as drivers in the neighborhood. ers at twice the rate of African Americans.) This isn’t to say all racial inequities in policing originate Police patrol patterns are, in fact, sometimes more obvi- with the rules organizations follow. Racial attitudes and biases ously racially motivated. Targeting black bars, rather than white among police officers are still a source of racial disparity in country clubs, for Saturday-night random alcohol checks has police vehicle stops. But even this is a more complicated story this character. This also happens when police stop minority than personal prejudice and old-fashioned bigotry. drivers for being in white neighborhoods. This “out-of-place policing” is often a routine police practice, but can also arise bias among individual officers from calls for service from white households suspicious of The two most common sources of individual bias are con- minorities in their otherwise segregated neighborhoods. In our scious prejudice and unconscious cognitive bias. Conscious conversations with African American drivers, many were quite prejudice is typically, but incorrectly, thought of as the most conscious of the risk they took when walking or driving in common source of individuals’ racist behavior. While some indi- white neighborhoods. vidual police officers, just like some employers or real estate “My son... was working at the country club… He missed agents, may be old-fashioned bigots, this isn’t a widespread the bus and he said he was walking out Queens Road. After a source of racial bias in police stops. Not only is prejudice against while all the lights came popping on in every house. He guessed African Americans on the decline in the United States, but most they called and … the police came and they questioned him, police forces prohibit this kind of racism and reprimand or pun- ish such officers when it’s discovered. In these cases, in fact, orga- For example, a 2006 study by sociologists Alexandra Kalev, nizational mechanisms prevent, or at least reduce, bigoted Frank Dobbin, and Erin Kelly of race and gender employment behavior. bias in the private sector found that holding management Most social psychologists agree, however, that implicit accountable for equal employment opportunities is particularly biases against minorities are widespread in the population. efficient for reducing race and gender biases. Thus, the active While only about 10 percent of the white population will admit monitoring and managing of police officers based on racial they have explicitly racist attitudes, more than three-quarters composition of their stops and searches holds much promise display implicit anti-black bias. for mitigating this “invisible” prejudice. Studies of social cognition (or, how people think) show Citizen and police review boards can play proactive and that people simplify and manage information by organizing it reactive roles in monitoring both individual police behavior as into social categories. By focusing on obvious status charac- well as problematic organizational practices. Local police forces teristics such as sex, race, or age, all of us tend to categorize can use data they collect on racial disparity in police stops to ourselves and others into groups. Once people are racially cat- identify problematic organizational behaviors such as inten- egorized, stereotypes automatically, and often unconsciously, sively policing minority neighborhoods, targeting minorities in become activated and influence behavior. Given pervasive media white neighborhoods, and racial profiling in searches. images of African American men as dangerous and threaten- Aggressive enforcement of civil rights laws will also play ing, it shouldn’t be surprising that when officers make deci- a key role in encouraging local police chiefs and employers to sions about whom to pull over or whom to search, unconscious continue to monitor and address prejudice and discrimination bias may encourage them to focus more often on minorities. inside their organizations. This is an area where the federal These kinds of biases come into play especially for local government has a clear role to play. Filing lawsuits against cities police who, in contrast to highway patrol officers, do much more and states with persistent patterns of racially biased policing— low-speed, routine patrolling of neighborhoods and business whether based on the defense of segregated white neighbor- districts and thus have more discretion in making decisions about hoods or the routine patrolling of crime “hot spots”—would whom to stop. In our research in North Carolina, for example, we found that while highway patrol officers weren’t more likely to stop African American drivers than white driv- ers, local police stopped African Americans 70 percent more often than white drivers, even after statistically adjusting for driving behavior. Local officers were also more likely to stop men, younger drivers, and drivers in older cars, con- send a message to all police forces that the routine harassment firming this process was largely about unconscious bias rather of minority citizens is unacceptable in the United States. than explicit racial profiles. Race, gender, age, class biases, and stereotypes about perceived dangerousness seem to explain justice in the obama era this pattern of local police vehicle stops. Given the crucial role the federal justice department has played in both creating and confronting racial profiling, one strategies for change may wonder whether the election of President Barack Obama Unconscious biases are particularly difficult for an organ- will have any consequences for racially biased policing. ization to address because offending individuals are typically Obama certainly has personal reasons to challenge racist unaware of them, and when confronted they may deny any practices. And given the success of his presidential campaign, racist intent. it would seem he has the political capital to address racial issues There is increasing evidence that even deep-seated stereo- in a way and to an extent unlike any of his predecessors. types and unconscious biases can be eroded through both edu- At the same time, the new president has vowed to con- cation and exposure to minorities who don’t fit common tinue to fight a war on terrorism, a war often understood and stereotypes, and that they can be contained when people are explicitly defined in religious and ethnic terms. In some ways, held accountable for their decisions. Indeed, it appears that the threat of terrorism has replaced the threat of African Amer- acts of racial discrimination (as opposed to just prejudicial atti- icans in the U.S. political lexicon. There’s evidence as well that tudes or beliefs) can be stopped through managerial author- politicians, both Democrat and Republican, have increased their ity, and prejudice itself seems to be reduced through both verbal attacks on illegal immigrants and in doing so may be education and exposure to minorities. providing a fertile ground for new rounds of profiling against Hispanics in this country. So, while the racial profiling of African Americans as explicit national policy is unlikely in the Obama Administration, other groups may not be so lucky. Americans committed to racial justice and equality will likely take this as a cautionary tale. They will also likely hope the Obama Administration decides to take a national leader- ship role in ending racial profiling. But if it does, as sociologists we hope the administration won’t make the all too common mistake of assuming racial profiling is primarily the result of racial prejudice or even the more widespread psychology of unconscious bias.