racial profiling meaning essay

Racial Profiling Essay: Outline, Examples, & Writing Tips

Racial profiling is not uncommon. It’s incredibly offensive and unfair behavior that causes most of the protests in support of people of color. It occurs when people are suspected of committing a crime based on their skin color or ethnicity.

Our specialists will write a custom essay specially for you!

Unfortunately, most people are unaware that racial profiling is an everyday phenomenon that harms both the victims and society. Therefore, it’s crucial that we highlight this issue in as many ways as possible. One of the options is expressing your opinion through writing. A racial profiling essay can be inspiring and persuasive. All the power is in your hands, so let’s figure out how to use it! Keep reading this guide made by Custom-writing.org experts.

The article contains a writing guide, a collection of racial profiling essay topics, ideas, and examples, as well as the tips on making a racial profiling essay outline. We hope that it will inspire you to make an A+ argumentative racial profiling essay or even a persuasive speech on the topic!

🤔 What Is a Racial Profiling Essay about?

• 📑 Making an Outline
• 👌 Writing Tips

📝 Racial Profiling Essay Examples

🔗 references.

There is more than one objective for writing a racial profiling essay. First of all, it can be as simple as expressing your feelings about it. For example, you might consider pointing out how unfair and unjustified those actions are. Moreover, if you’re a law student, you should definitely back up those conclusions with the extractions from the Constitution.

You can then focus on describing the impact it has on society, which makes a fantastic cause and effect essay. There are so many more topic ideas, but if you’re feeling stuck, go ahead to the article’s next sections!

Argumentative Racial Profiling Essay

To write a successful argumentative racial profiling essay, you need to focus on investigating the topic to express your perspective later. Every statement you include in the main body of the writing should be supported by evidence. The essential part of such an essay is a clear thesis statement! And if you struggle to come up with a good one yourself, you can get help from a thesis statement generator online .

Just in 1 hour! We will write you a plagiarism-free paper in hardly more than 1 hour

Persuasive Racial Profiling Essay

Unlike the type discussed above, a persuasive racial profiling essay should aim to convince your readers that your point of view is the only correct one. Instead of just presenting your point of view, you need to gather the most convincing facts that can influence your audience. It requires expertise in the topic of racial profiling.

Racial Profiling Essay Topics

Looking for a racial profiling essay topic ? Find a short and sweet topic collection below.

• The impact of racial profiling on the US society. For this essay, you would need to study how citizens react to racial profiling. You might also include some statistics from the previous years.
• Present your point of view on the issue of racial profiling. If you ever faced it yourself, your reflective essay would be even more powerful! Include as much evidence as you can. 
• Racial profiling: are African Americans overreacting? Someone feels like people might be taking this issue too personally. Therefore, you should provide strong arguments to point out how discriminating those actions are.
• Accepting racial profiling as a common practice. Express your opinion on this topic. Do you think police should be legally allowed to practice racial profiling? Why would it be a violation of rights?
• Racial profiling from a psychological perspective. Try to analyze this occurrence as if you were a professional psychologist. What do you think makes law enforcement act this way?
• Does racism impact the US immigration?
• Discuss the definition and origins of racial profiling.  
• Analyze the aim and values of the Black Life Matter movement.
• Racial stereotypes in Disney films.
• Examine the problem of workplace racism.  
• How can racism in medicine be eliminated?  
• What is the colorblind racism?  
• Describe your personal experience of racism .
• Compare the ways South Africa and the US are handling racism.  
• The goals of the Black Lives Matter movement.
• Explain why racism is a persistent problem in modern society.
• Explore the concept of racial profiling in the “war on drugs.”
• Childhood under the racist laws of apartheid in Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime .
• Discuss the effect of racism on child development .
• Is there a racial disparity gap in healthcare?
• Describe the problems racism causes in American schools.  
• How does racism affect modern society?
• Racial stereotypes in music video .
• The pros and cons of racial profiling in the airports.
• Describe the specifics of colorblind racism .
• Discuss the possible solutions of racial profiling problem.
• Terrorist attacs in 9/11, hate crimes, and racial profiling. 
• Is institutionalized racism a real problem or a myth?  
• Racial and ethnical prejudices in breast cancer treatment.  
• Examine the cases of racism against healthcare workers and their consequences.
• Analyze the impact of racism on globalization .
• Describe and characterize the main types of modern racism .
• Racial profiling of minority groups in the US. 
• Is racial discrimination issue completely eliminated from American society?
• Evaluate the racial inequalities in the US judicial system.  
• Describe how race relations are represented in Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward .
• Analyze the difference between individual and institutional racism.  
• Investigation of the history of racism in The Case for Reparations by Coates. 
• Is racial profiling a discrimination or a necessary evil? 
• Ways of dealing with racism in American education .
• Examine the history of racial stereotypes in the US.
• Explain why racial profiling is a violation of human rights.
• Catastrophic consequences of discrimination and racial prejudice in the film A Soldier’s Story .
• Racism as a global issue.  
• Discuss the causes and effects of racism in America. 
• What can be done to resolve the problem of racism at interactional level ?
• Analyze the issue of racial profiling of drivers.
• Describe the problem of racism and discrimination from the perspective of social psychology.
• Discuss the methods of solving the problem of policing racism .
• Examine the cases of racism in social work environment. 

📑 Racial Profiling Essay Outline

Whichever type of racial profiling essay you choose to work on, the basic writing strategy remains the same. After you pick up the suitable title and finish your research, it’s time to reorganize the main ideas. The best way to do it is to create a racial profiling essay outline that serves as a foundation for your future essay.

There are three elements that any essay must have:

• Introduction

The main body should have at least three paragraphs in which you present your arguments supported by evidence.

Receive a plagiarism-free paper tailored to your instructions. Cut 15% off your first order!

Racial Profiling Essay Introduction

It is a good idea to start your essay with a hook – a statement that aims to grab your reader’s attention. In your racial profiling essay introduction, you could use some impressive statistics that illustrate the problem of racial discrimination or describe a real-life situation.

At this stage, it’s also essential that you think about composing a racial profiling thesis statement . It goes as the last sentence of the introduction and becomes the focal point of your whole writing. The thesis statement includes your opinion and a short description of your arguments.

Racial Profiling Essay Conclusion

In conclusion, you should summarize your arguments and paraphrase your racial profiling thesis statement. It is also a good idea to add some information about the most important findings. This way, your essay would be both informative and persuasive.

👌 Racial Profiling Essay: Writing Tips

Let us remind you of some basic rules you should stick to while writing:

• Introduce your position on the problem and, at least, three major points in the thesis statement of your racial profiling essay.
• Gather enough facts and pieces of evidence to support your points.
• Do not forget to study the arguments of the opposing side.

Before you get down to writing your essay on racial profiling, try to answer the following questions:

Get an originally-written paper according to your instructions!

• When did racial profiling start?
• Why does it happen?
• What consequences does it lead to?

Try to find some statistical data to include in your essay on racial profiling. Be careful with sources and information. The point is that racial profiling is unconstitutional, which is why you will not find official data, something like police reports, etc. Thus, use only credible online and printed sources when writing your papers on racial profiling.

There is also a way to show your creativity in the essay on racial profiling. You may play the devil advocate’s role and support it in the paper on racial profiling. We are sure this unusual approach will impress your teacher!

Below you’ll find links to 3 racial profiling essay examples. We hope that they will inspire you to write an A+ paper on racism and discrimination.

The modern globalized society provides numerous opportunities for improved communication and increased mutual understanding. However, there are still such problems as discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, mentality, sex, or gender, biased attitudes to some minorities, and widespread stereotypical thinking.

Read the full text

The system of racism entails degrading and harmful actions and beliefs that are implemented and expressed by both groups of people. Racism over the years has been one of the reasons behind poverty and lack of access to social mobility in the United States.

Racial identity and racial socialization are proposed to promote the improvement of African American adolescents in the aspect of race-related difficulties. Current studies pointed out that discrimination is a condition that has harmful effects on the mental health of African Americans.

So, good luck with your papers on racial profiling! Do not hesitate to visit our blog if you have trouble with terrorism essays or any other written assignment.

• Racial Profiling: Definition | American Civil Liberties Union
• This is why everyday racial profiling is so dangerous – CNN
• Racial profiling – AP News
• Racial profiling: Germany debating police methods – DW
• Psychology responds to racial profiling
• Racial Profiling – Equal Justice Initiative
• Racial Profiling: Past, Present, and Future?
• Racial profiling | Independent
• Racial Profiling – University of Michigan Law School
• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to LinkedIn
• Share to email

Without a doubt, a natural disaster essay is a tough paper to write. To begin with, when people encounter a disaster risk, it’s a tragedy. Emergency situations can affect hundreds, thousands, and millions of people. These are the crises and events that change people’s lives drastically. So, disaster and emergency...

“You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say”Martin Luther There are a lot of other good quotations that can serve as a good beginning for your essay on responsibility and provide good ideas for writing.

Exemplification essays, which are also called illustration essays, are considered one of the easiest papers to write. However, even the easiest tasks require some experience and practice. So, if you are not experienced enough in writing exemplification essays, you will face certain challenges.

You push the snooze button once again and finally open your eyes. It is already 8:50, and your classes start at 9. “I’m going to be late again!”— you think, already in full panic mode. In a minute, you rush out the door half-dressed, swallowing your sandwich on the go.  ...

An essay about Harriet Tubman is to focus on the biography and accomplishments of a famous American abolitionist and political activist of the 19th century. Harriet Tubman was born into slavery, escaped it herself, and helped others escape it. She changed many jobs throughout her lifetime, being a housekeeper, a...

What is a documented essay and what is the purpose of it? It is a type of academic writing where the author develops an opinion relying on secondary resources. A documented essay can be assigned in school or college. You should incorporate arguments and facts from outside sources into the...

What is a reflexive essay? If you have just received the assignment and think there is a typo, you’re in the right place. Long story short, no, there is no mistake. You actually need to write a reflexive essay, not a reflective one. The thing is that reflective and reflexive...

Fairies and evil spirits, noble kings and queens, beautiful princesses and brave princes, mysterious castles and abandoned huts somewhere in a thick a wood… This is all about fairy tales. Fairy tales are always associated with childhood. Fairy tales always remind us that love rules the world and the Good...

Subjective or objective essay writing is a common task students have to deal with. On the initial stage of completing the assignment, you should learn how to differentiate these two types of papers. Their goals, methods, as well as language, tone, and voice, are different. A subjective essay focuses on...

Writing All About Me paragraph is probably one of the most usual assignments. For example, students might write it when entering an academic institution. Such work gives an opportunity to introduce yourself, your skills, and goals. However, it is not the only possible situation.

Coral reefs can be called one of the most amazing things created by nature. These structures can be found in tropical and temperate waters. Like many other unique natural phenomena, coral reefs are influenced by human activity these days. This negative impact is one of the significant issues to consider when...

An ambition essay focuses on one’s strong desire to achieve success in one or several areas. It might be one’s career, finance, family, art, health, or all at once. Writing an ambition essay, you might want to consider your own life or examples from the world literature. You can describe...

Hello! Just wanted to say how I’m glad to find your blog! This post is a great help for my essay on racial profiling. Thanks!

Thanks for a kind of plan for writing an essay on racial profiling! Real help for those who can’t cope with the task!

University of Notre Dame

Fresh Writing

A publication of the University Writing Program

• Home ›
• Essays ›

What Causes Racial Profiling?

By Sarah Galbenski

Published: July 31, 2018

Rufus Scales, 26 and black, was driving his younger brother Devin to his hair-cutting class in this genteel, leafy city when they heard the siren's whoop and saw the blue light in the rearview mirror of their black pickup. Two police officers pulled them over for minor infractions that included expired plates and failing to hang a flag from a load of scrap metal in the pickup's bed. But what happened next was nothing like a routine traffic stop. Uncertain whether to get out of the car, Rufus Scales said, he reached to restrain his brother from opening the door. A black officer stunned him with a Taser, he said, and a white officer yanked him from the driver's seat. Temporarily paralyzed by the shock, he said, he fell face down, and the officer dragged him across the asphalt. (LaFraniere and Lehren)

In America today, this is a narrative that we have to come to know all too well. A young black man, either guilty of simply "driving while black" or a minor infraction, is pulled over by the police, usually in an affluent, predominately white neighborhood. Upon being pulled over, the driver is treated by the officers in a cruel manner that is not commensurate with his crime. This prevalent narrative is an example of racial profiling, which is "a form of differential treatment based on an individual's racial or ethnic social identity" (Williams 401). Although racial profiling affects many sectors of American society, particularly education and employment, for the purposes of this paper, I will be focusing on racial profiling as it pertains to law enforcement proceedings. According to Brian N. Williams, associate professor of Public Administration and Policy at The University of Georgia, "Biased policing exists when an individual's race is used as an illegitimate factor for initiating police actions against the individual" (401). So, if police officers understand that it is biased and unlawful to initiate police action against an individual because of his or her race, what causes them to continue to racially profile individuals? I contend that while racial profiling can be caused by officers feeling pressured to produce crime-reducing statistics and by those in power valuing efficacy over constitutionality, it is primarily caused by officers' implicit biases. Furthermore, it is not simply caused in reaction to an "abundance" of black crime.

Williams reports that there are "a growing number of research studies that highlight the disproportionate number of traffic and pedestrian stops and searches of minorities" (402). A likely contributing factor to this racial inequity is the fact that high crime "impact zones" tend to be comprised of mostly minority residents, and, based on interviews with the New York Police Department, Andres Garcia reported that, "Trained as they are in high crime areas, and taught that they are there to bring down crime, officers feel pressured to produce numbers and statistics, and therefore engage in stop-and-frisk practices at a disproportionate rate in these impact zones," zones which are overwhelmingly inhabited by minorities. The pressure to produce is even higher for recent recruits, fresh out of the Police Academy, who are aiming to prove themselves as bona fide members of the force. Unfortunately for the minority residents of impact zones, these eager new recruits tend to have first assignments in their neighborhoods. Since officers, especially new ones, are expected to produce crime-reducing statistics in minority populated impact zones, they often resort to racial profiling as an effective means to achieve their quota.

Although racial profiling may be considered an "effective" means to identify stop-and-frisk targets and fight crime, it is in no way constitutional. In fact, "In August 2013, Federal District Court Judge Shira A. Scheindlin ruled that the New York Police Department practice of stop-and-frisk, in which individuals are stopped for questioning and frisked for weapons, is unconstitutional because it violates the civil rights of the blacks and Latinos who are disproportionately targets of the program" (Garcia 37). Despite the unconstitutionality of the practice of stop-and-frisk due to its promotion of racial profiling, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg argued for the efficacy of stop-and-frisk and said that its practice would continue until the end of his term because he "wouldn't want to be responsible for a lot of people dying" (Garcia 38). When people in positions of power, such as Mayor Bloomberg, value efficacy over constitutionality when it comes to practices like stop-and-frisk, more occurrences of racial profiling are caused and perpetuated.

While pressure to produce crime-reducing statistics and more value placed on the efficacy than on the constitutionality of stop-and-frisk practices certainly cause racial profiling to occur, I argue that implicit biases encourage racial profiling to run rampant. Implicit biases are defined as "the stereotypes and prejudices that reside and operate in our mind outside of our conscious awareness" ("Suspect Race"). Although we may not possess awareness nor approval of our possession of these stereotypes, they are nonetheless present in our unconscious mind. As Malcolm Gladwell states in his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking , "We don't deliberately choose our unconscious attitudes…The giant computer that is our unconscious silently crunches all the data it can from experiences we've had, the people we've met, the lessons we've learned, the books we've read, the movies we've seen, and so on, and it forms an opinion" (39). In order to help us gain an understanding of our unconscious's opinions, social psychologists Anthony G. Greenwald, Mahzarin Banaji, and Brian Nosek created a series of Implicit Association Tests (IATs) designed to prove that "we make connections much more quickly between pairs of ideas that are already related in our minds than we do between pairs of words that are unfamiliar to us" (Gladwell 37). The most famous of the IATs, the Race IAT, asks participants to sort both positive and negative words, such as "fabulous" and "evil" and images of white faces and black faces into their respective categories. After the participants sort words and faces separately, they are asked to associate positive words with white faces and sort them into the same category. Conversely, negative words and black faces are related during this first part of the test. For the second part of the test, the categories switch; white is now associated with negative words, and black is now associated with positive words. The results of this test state that "more than 80 percent of all those who have taken the test end up having pro-white associations, meaning that it takes them measurably longer to complete answers when they are required to put good words into the "black" category than when they are required to link bad things with black people" (Gladwell 39).

In order to scientifically explain this difference in response time, scholars have found that "there's some evidence that the amygdala, a center in the brain for emotions, flashes a threat warning when it perceives people who look 'different'" (Kristof). However, despite this biological explanation, it is more likely that our biases are derived culturally. This is hypothesized because in actuality, "many African-Americans themselves have an unconscious pro-white bias" (Kristof). White people look "different" from black people, yet many black people do not experience these threat warnings when encountering an image of a white face, as evidenced by their quicker response time when associating white faces with positive words. Even though many people, including undoubtedly many African-Americans, explicitly repudiate the stereotype that associates minorities (particularly blacks) with crime, according to Jack Glaser, Berkeley social psychologist and author of Suspect Race: Causes and Consequences of Racial Profiling, this stereotype is still pervasive in our culture and media, and therefore still influences all of our unconscious biases, African-Americans' included. Applying this concept of implicit biases to policing, Glaser asserts, "When we're making decisions under uncertainty, we tend to use cognitive shortcuts. What might feel like a legitimate hunch to a police officer could actually be the influence of a racial stereotype." Furthermore, these stereotypes evoke a sense of fear in police officers, and when they are put into perceived life-threatening situations, they resort to simplistic, overzealous responses.

Yet another view that has prevailed in American society for decades is that an "abundance" of black crime justly causes racial profiling, reactionary policing, and sometimes even "necessary" forms of police brutality. However, "far from being a novel bit of truth-telling, the argument that black crime is the cause of reactionary policing is among the aged and easily refuted clichés of American racial history" (Cobb). Jelani Cobb, the Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism at Columbia University, finds it ironic that this view is mostly held by American conservatives because "the idea that the treatment of an individual hinges upon his or her demographic category flies in the face of the doctrine of individual rights central to modern conservatism." Yet this revered doctrine of individual rights still pertains to the white population of our country, for although "the white-on-white mayhem is profound" as white people are six times more likely to be murdered by a white person than a black person, "no one speaks of it in racial terms" (Dyson 149). In our country, white is the default race. And, as the Race IAT demonstrates, it is far easier for the majority of our population to implicitly (and racially) associate whites with good terms and blacks with evil ones. When a black person commits a crime against their brethren, it is immediately racially labeled. Conversely, when a white person commits the same crime against one of their own, they are not lumped in with the rest of their race but are instead treated as singular beings:

That's because the phrase white-on-white crime doesn't serve a larger ideological purpose. White-on-white crime does not jibe with the exclusive focus on a black-on-black narrative that conservatives and liberals too, have bought into. The success of that narrative depends on a few things. You had to construct the ghetto as a space of savagery that was unique to black folk…Then you had to say that any right-thinking folk wouldn't kill each other. (Dyson 149)

The cultural narrative strikes again, construing blacks as savages, portraying whites as upright citizens, and unconsciously influencing us all. Furthermore, do blacks really commit more crimes or are they simply arrested for them at higher rates? In the case of drug crimes, "blacks are nearly four times as likely as whites to be arrested for drug possession. This is despite the evidence that whites and blacks use drugs at roughly the same rate" In fact, "from 1995 to 2005, African Americans comprised approximately 13% of drug users but 36% of drug arrests and 46% of those convicted for drug offenses" (Nellis). The absurdity of the excuse that "horrific black crime" triggers racial profiling is quite evident. Whites use drugs at the same rate. And, "white folk consistently lead all other groups in assault, larceny, illegal weapons possession, arson, and vandalism" (Dyson 149). Once again, it has been proven that indoctrinated cultural biases influence the police's perceptions on black crime. They are not solely combatting a "radical disproportion" of black crime.

In the case of Rufus Scales, it is highly probable that before the police officers even identified his minor infractions, they unconsciously associated his blackness with crime. It is important to note that they possessed this implicit bias through no fault of their own. Since this stereotype is perpetuated by our culture, both black and white officers have no choice but to be inundated with examples of this black crime association in the media and society at large. However, their hamartia, their fatal flaw, occurred when they failed to recognize that they were under the influence of a racial stereotype and proceeded to abuse Scales out of fear. Although it is important to admit that we all fall prey to implicit biases, it is absolutely paramount to recognize when our biases cloud our vision and proactively choose to act out of rationality and respect, not out of fear. Whether or not Scales was in an impact zone or under the jurisdiction of a mayor who believed in efficacy over constitutionality, he will always be subject to officers operating by implicit biases. For this reason, it is of the utmost importance that officers are trained to understand implicit biases in hopes of reducing the number of occurrences of racial profiling. And, on a larger scale, it is crucial that we understand our own implicit biases so that we can be able to recognize the singularity of every human being instead of associating them with a stereotype.

Works Cited

Cobb, Jelani. "No Such Thing as Racial Profiling." The New Yorker, 4 Dec. 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/eric-garner-racial-profiling . Accessed 21 November 2017.

Dyson, Michael Eric. "Our Own Worst Enemy?" Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America, St. Martin's Press, 2017, 143-169.

Garcia, Andres. "Stop-and-frisk: the policing of Latinos in New York." NACLA Report on the Americas, vol. 46, no. 4, 2013, pp. 37+. Global Issues in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A355468776/GIC?u=nd_ref&xid=87fec209 . Accessed 6 November 2017.

Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2005.

Glaser, Jack. "Suspect Race: Causes and Consequences of Racial Profiling." News Center: Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California Berkeley , 24 Nov. 2014, https://gspp.berkeley.edu/news/news-center/suspect-race-causes-and-consequences-of- %09racial-profiling . Accessed 6 November 2017.

Kristof, Nicholas D. "What? Me Biased?" The New York Times, 30 Oct. 2008, p. A39(L). Global Issues in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A188025544/GIC?u=nd_ref&xid=5294534d . Accessed 6 November 2017.

LaFraniere, Sharon, and Andrew W. Lehren. "The Disproportionate Risks of Driving While Black." The New York Times , 24 Oct. 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/us/racial-disparity-traffic-stops-driving-black.html . Accessed 6 November 2017.

Norris, Ashley. "The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prison." The Sentencing Project, 14 June 2016, http://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color- of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons/ . Accessed 21 November 2017.

Williams, Brian N. "Racial Profiling and Biased Policing." Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, edited by Patrick L. Mason, 2 nd ed., vol. 3, Macmillan Reference USA, 2013, pp. 401- 406. Global Issues in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX4190600368/GIC?u=nd_ref&xid=f71f76de . Accessed 6 November 2017.

• To what extent does Galbenski demonstrate fairness/evenhandedness in her argument regarding the causes of racial profiling? Are you convinced by her argument, or do you see it as a function of her own implicit bias? Point to specific evidence from the essay to support your claims.
• How does Galbenski work to establish her credibility with her reader? To what extent is she successful in doing so?
• Comment on the effectiveness of Galbenski's use of the Rufus Scales story as a framing device. What kind of response did that story invite from you as a reader?

Sarah Galbenski

Racial Profiling in America Essay

Introduction, reference list.

Racial profiling is a reality for many Americans today and an issue that generates a great deal of heated debate among politicians. Some of the supporters are maintaining that it can be a valuable crime-fighting tool sometimes, whilst opponents claim that it is an unjustifiable violation of the US’s Constitutional guarantees of equal rights to all. Racial profiling can be defined as a police practice of targeting people of color for criminal suspicion and thereof for police search and arrest. Racial profiling “has been primarily used to denote police bias and stereotypes in its law enforcement practices based on racial and ethnic consideration” (Kamalu, 2016, p. 190).

Generally, in social researches, the term “racial profiling” is used more broadly than criminal profiling, which requires the use of specific evidence. Usually, racial profiling involves not only police officers and security officials, but also other representatives of social institutions and average citizens, who treat other people on the grounds of their ethnicity or racial features. Typical targets of racial profiling in America are African Americans, Indians, Asians, and Muslims. So, the main causes and consequences for American society in general and for color minorities specifically will be discussed further.

The first and the most significant reason for the present situation concerning racial profiling may be referred to broadly as a “historically conditioned cause.” Its roots back to America’s complicated history of slavery, the legacy of slavery, and is based on a deeply ingrained idea of racial superiority. These historical features of American society formed the subconscious perception that people of color are worse than white people. In the twenty-first century, these misconceptions have been intensified by popular culture, negative media coverage, traditions, and, what is more important, by some tragic events and phenomena, such as terrorist attacks and global immigration.

For such a multicultural country like the USA, racial bias and prejudice represent a significant problem, and the question of race arises again. Turda and Quine (2018, p. 113) state that “…challenge that all Americans and Europeans face today … is to restore and preserve their increasingly diluted and weakened collective identities without pandering to rising xenophobia and chauvinism within individual nations.” Meanwhile, historically conditioned racial prejudice shapes new stereotypes and lead to grim consequences and ramifications.

The next group of reasons is inextricably connected to the previous one and can be called a “legislative.” The long history of discriminatory laws adopted and enforced became the solid ground for the disastrous disparities in American society. The contemporary situation around racial profiling is believed to stem mainly from the “War on Drugs,” which burst in the 1970-s (Glacer, 2015). The War on Drugs was declared by the US president Nixon, who formally sanctioned eradication, interdiction, and incarceration, which turned into a wave of arrests, primarily of black citizens. The government, as well as society, used to believe that the use of drugs is a culturally-based phenomenon that served as an excuse to target representatives of color minorities and was considered as the effective method of combating the problem of drugs.

Another discriminatory legislative initiative is immigration law enforcement, which started in 2002 under the Homeland Security Act, following the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, and focusing on Arabs and Muslims. The main goal was to eliminate any security vulnerabilities that might occur within the US borders. As well-known sociologist Glacer (2015, p. xi) claims, “The passage of state laws requiring local and state police to enforce immigration law is an incitement to ethnic profiling.” This initiative is known to have some repercussions, which will be viewed further.

Although the abovementioned causes are not exceptional, and there are other reasons for racial profiling, as there is no smoke without fire, only negative ones have been discussed. They threaten the stability of American society and deprive a great number of citizens of their civil and, what is worse, human rights, promised by the American Constitution. The most evident of these effects, divided into two categories according to the root causes, will be viewed below.

Historically conditioned causes, which include racial bias driven by stereotypes and prejudice, manifest themselves in so-called “white privilege,” social advantages for white people that translate into disadvantages for other nationalities. It turns out that people of color are far more likely to be suspected of criminal behavior and far more likely to receive harsh treatment if they are arrested for a crime. Unfortunately, according to Starr (2016), it is challenging to prove disparate-treatment discrimination by police. Hence, this results not only in violation of the constitutional rights of the local communities of color, but also has a detrimental psychological, economic, and political impact on them.

For instance, institutionalized profiling at work means that representatives of color minorities are considered less competent and less hardworking, which means they earn less money, which leads to poverty and make these people vulnerable to its effects. Whole communities become alienated and, therefore, unwilling to cooperate with the authorities to create a safer and happier environment.

The extremes of law enforcement resulted in soaring incarceration rates in America, disproportional numbers of which targeted people of color. The connection of drugs with black and Hispanic minorities thus has become a fixed stereotype forming a vicious circle. The assumption that minorities are more likely to commit offense justified the police force to subject representatives of black and Hispanic to a traffic stop, searches and arrests, and stiff penalties. The whole situation has precisely the opposite effect as it negatively affects crime prevention by undermining people’s trust in law and, as Clacer (2015) pointed out, hinders the crime investigation and increases crime because those who are not racially profiled feel emboldened to carry illegal and criminal activities.

Community and workplace raids, traffic arrests, and searches by police create an atmosphere of tension and hostility. Turda and Quine (2018, p. 98) claim that the significant consequence of immigration law enforcement is that “the employment of the crude techniques of racial profiling has resulted in stopping, searching, and detention of persons who were perceived to be, but were not, in fact, Arabs and Muslims, such as Sikhs and other South Asians.” Moreover, draconian methods of immigration law enforcement led to massive erroneous detentions of not only illegal immigrants but also the US citizens.

In summary, racial bias, as well as prejudice and stereotypes, are deeply ingrained into the public subconscious. Supported by the government in the form of wrongful institutional and economic practices, these attitudes influence the behavioral patterns of American citizens and thus, form a vicious circle. Therefore, the consequences of racial profiling manifest themselves in evidently massive disparities in the exercise of economic, social, and cultural rights of people of color. The lack of scholarly publications shows that the issue of racial profiling remains unaddressed in contemporary American society and requires further studies, especially of methods of stereotype elimination, which could change the situation eventually.

Glacer, J. (2015) Suspect race: causes and consequences of racial profiling . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Kamalu, N.C. (2016) ‘African Americans and racial profiling by us law enforcement: an analysis of police traffic stops and searches of motorists in Nebraska, 2002-2007’, African Journal of Criminology & Justice Studies , 9(1), pp. 187-206.

Starr, S.B. (2016) ‘Testing racial profiling: empirical assessment of disparate treatment by police’, University of Chicago Legal Forum , 2016(12), pp. 485-531.

Turda, M. and Quine, M.S. (2018) Historicizing race . London: Bloomsbury Academic.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, December 3). Racial Profiling in America. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racial-profiling-in-america/

"Racial Profiling in America." IvyPanda , 3 Dec. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/racial-profiling-in-america/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Racial Profiling in America'. 3 December.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Racial Profiling in America." December 3, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racial-profiling-in-america/.

1. IvyPanda . "Racial Profiling in America." December 3, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racial-profiling-in-america/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Racial Profiling in America." December 3, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racial-profiling-in-america/.

• The Common Law Doctrine of Privity of Contract Seems Unjustifiable
• Criminal Profiling, Its History and Legality
• Carl Hempel and Positivism
• Donald Trump: His Political Course and Contribution as a President
• The US and Britain Role in the Middle East Conflict
• The Fight Against Human Trafficking
• Iran and Its Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons: Is War Imminent?

Racial Profiling and Why it Hurts Minorities

The controversial practice can occur on the streets, in stores and at airports

• Understanding Race & Racism
• People & Events
• Law & Politics
• The U. S. Government
• U.S. Foreign Policy
• U.S. Liberal Politics
• U.S. Conservative Politics
• Women's Issues
• Civil Liberties
• The Middle East
• Immigration
• Crime & Punishment
• Canadian Government
• Understanding Types of Government
• M.A., English and Comparative Literary Studies, Occidental College
• B.A., English, Comparative Literature, and American Studies, Occidental College

The definition of racial profiling, the minority groups most affected by such discrimination and the drawbacks of the practice with this review. If you've ever been pulled over by police for no reason, followed around in stores or repeatedly pulled aside by airport security for “random” searches, you've likely experienced racial profiling.

Why Racial Profiling Doesn't Work

  Orjan F. Ellingvag / Getty Images 

Supporters of racial profiling argue that this practice is necessary because it cuts down on crime. If certain  people are more likely to commit certain kinds of crimes, it makes sense to target them, they say. But racial profiling opponents cite research they say proves the practice is ineffective. For example, since the dawn of the war on drugs in the 1980s, law enforcement agents have disproportionately targeted Black and Latino drivers for narcotics. But a number of studies on traffic stops found that white drivers were more likely than their African American and Hispanic counterparts to have drugs on them. This supports the idea that authorities should focus on suspicious individuals rather than on specific racial groups to lower crime.

Black and Latino New Yorkers Subjected to Stop-and-Frisk

Conversations about racial profiling have frequently centered on police targeting drivers of color during traffic stops. But in New York City, there’s been a great deal of public outcry about officers stopping and frisking African Americans and Latinos on the street. Young men of color are particularly at risk for this practice. While New York City authorities say that the stop-and-frisk strategy lowers crime, groups such as the New York Civil Liberties Union say that the data don’t bear this out. Moreover, the NYCLU has pointed out that more weapons have been found on whites stopped and frisked than on Blacks and Latinos, so it makes little sense that police have disproportionately pulled aside minorities in the city.

How Racial Profiling Affects Latinos

As concerns about unauthorized immigration reach a fever pitch in the United States, more Latinos find themselves subjected to racial profiling. Cases of police unlawfully profiling, abusing or detaining Hispanics have not only led to investigations by the U.S. Justice Department but have also made a series of headlines in places such as Arizona, California, and Connecticut. In addition to these cases, immigrant rights groups have also raised concerns about U.S. Border Patrol agents using excessive and deadly force on undocumented immigrants with impunity.

Shopping While Black

While terms such as “driving while Black” and “driving while brown” are now used interchangeably with racial profiling, the phenomenon of “shopping while Black” remains a mystery to people who’ve never been treated like a criminal in a retail establishment. So, what is “shopping while Black?” It refers to the practice of salespeople in stores treating customers of color as if they’re shoplifters. It may also refer to store personnel treating minority clients like they don’t have enough money to make purchases. Salespeople in these situations may ignore patrons of color or refuse to show them high-end goods when they ask to see them. Prominent Blacks such as Condoleezza Rice have reportedly been profiled in retail establishments.

A Definition of Racial Profiling

Stories about racial profiling constantly appear in the news, but that doesn’t mean the public has a good grasp on what this discriminatory practice is. This definition of racial profiling is used in context and coupled with examples to help clarify. Sharpen your thoughts on racial profiling with this definition.

• Why Racial Profiling Is a Bad Idea
• Racial Bias and Discrimination: From Colorism to Racial Profiling
• 5 Examples of Institutional Racism in the United States
• What Is the Broken Windows Theory?
• 5 Common Misconceptions About Black Lives Matter
• African American Men and the Criminal Justice System
• How the Illinois v. Wardlow Case Affects Policing
• Defining Racism Beyond its Dictionary Meaning
• Terry v. Ohio: Supreme Court Case, Arguments, Impact
• What Are Racial Projects?
• The Definition of Institutional Racism
• The History of Modern Policing
• The Difference Between Hispanic and Latino
• The Racial Wealth Gap
• 5 Big Companies Sued for Racial Discrimination
• An Overview of Labeling Theory

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Acquisition
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Media
• Music and Religion
• Music and Culture
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Politics
• Law and Society
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Medical Ethics
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Security
• Computer Games
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Ethics
• Business Strategy
• Business History
• Business and Technology
• Business and Government
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic History
• Economic Systems
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Theory
• Politics and Law
• Public Policy
• Public Administration
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

17 Racial Profiling

Robin S. Engel, School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati

Derek Cohen is a Doctoral Student at the University of Cincinnati.

• Published: 01 April 2014
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

The use of the term “racial profiling” gained popularity in the mid-1990s and originally referred to the reliance on race as an explicit criterion in “profiles” of offenders that some police organizations issued to guide police officer decision making. This essay traces the evolution of racial profiling, both in terms of terminology and police practice, from the “War on Drugs” in the 1980s to present day. The essay highlights changes in policies, legislation, litigation, and data collection across the country as mechanisms to control the use of racial profiling, particularly in terms of stops and stop outcomes (e.g., citations, arrests, searches, and seizures). It also critiques the research methods and statistical analyses often used by researchers who conduct studies of the prevalence, causes, and consequences of racially biased policing. The essay concludes by issuing a new call to action for future research in the area of racial profiling. Rather than seeking incremental improvements in data collection and methodology, this essay argues for a fundamental reconceptualization of research on race and policing.

T he history of race and policing in the United States is long and troubled. For centuries, the police in America were used as instruments of the state to enforce discriminatory laws and uphold the status quo of the time ( Richardson 1974 ; Monkonen 1981). The discriminatory treatment by police of minorities—and blacks in particular—was reflective of a socially unjust and biased society ( Kerner Commission 1968 ). While the systematic targeting and biased treatment endured by minorities at the hands of American police has been well documented ( Williams and Murphy 1990 ), significant progress has been made in the last several decades toward equity and legitimacy in American policing ( Walker 2003 ; Warren and Tomaskovic-Devey 2009 ; Bayley and Nixon 2010 ). Nevertheless, the legacy that this troubled past brings to modern policing bears repeating. A current concern in American society remains the use of race or ethnicity by police as reason for some form of coercive action. This police practice—often referred to as racial profiling—is widely recognized by politicians, the public, and even the police themselves as inherently problematic. Yet reducing this problem to a single term—racial profiling—simultaneously reduces the nuances surrounding the multifaceted and complicated issues regarding police, race, and crime in America.

In this essay, we first begin with a brief historical overview of the ground previously traveled as it relates to policing, race, and research. In our discussion, we note the historical application of racially-biased police practices as a result of policies arising from the “War on Drugs” in the 1980s. Thereafter we describe the use and definition of the term “racial profiling” and trace the resulting changes in policies, legislation, litigation, and data collection across the country. The changes in data collection in particular resulted in the development of a body of research designed specifically to determine racial/ethnic disparities in police treatment during pedestrian and traffic stops. We summarize this body of research, including a focus on stops and stop outcomes (e.g., citations, arrests, searches, and seizures), and offer a critique of the research methods and statistical analyses often used by researchers. Finally, we issue a new call to action for future research in the area of racial profiling. Rather than seeking incremental improvements in data collection and methodology, we argue for a fundamental reconceptualization of research on race and policing. While we note that this essay is predominately focused on the experiences and research surrounding one racial group (blacks) within one country (United States), it is widely applicable to other minority groups within the United States, as well as minority groups within other countries. Indeed, it seems that the core components of the American story of racial bias, policing, and research is widely generalizable across cultures.

This essay represents a broad examination of racial profiling in the United States, both from historical and contemporary perspectives. Section 17.1 of the essay describes the history of racial profiling, as it was originally developed as a tactic to detect and apprehend drug couriers along the I-95 corridor of the Eastern Seaboard. Section 17.1 also describes the initial efforts to collect data on racial profiling, as well as identifying the evolving definition of the term. Section 17.2 reviews the literature on racially-biased policing starting with the classic ethnographic work that first identified issues related to race and policing; it then examines the more recent empirical evidence on the extent to which racial and ethnic disparities have appeared evident during vehicle and pedestrian stops, citation outcomes, and searches and seizure. Section 17.3 offers a new collective research agenda to help us begin to determine if the observed racial disparities in stops, citations, and searches and seizures amounts to racial/ethnic bias and discrimination. That section also draws some conclusions as to the state of the science on racially-biased policing.

A number of conclusions can be drawn:

Despite large-scale data collection efforts, the extent of racially-biased policing in the United States remains largely unknown

Despite calls from researchers to reform institutional practices, increase accountability and supervision, and engage in better data collection, the evidence regarding the actual impact of such recommendations on racially-biased policing is nearly non-existent.

While many agencies can readily identify racial/ethnic disparities, they often cannot detect bias, and further cannot determine why these disparities exist or how to effectively reduce them.

As police agencies continue to promote and advance practices that have demonstrated effectiveness (e.g., hot spots and other types of focused policing strategies), it is likely that racial/ethnic disparities in stops and stop outcomes will continue or perhaps even increase based on differential offending patterns and saturation patrols in predominately minority areas.

More, and better, research is necessary if we are serious about both the role of science in policing and the need to reduce racial/ethnic bias in policing.

17.1 History of Racial Profiling

While the troubled history of race and policing in the United States is lengthy and complex, a more recent focus on racial profiling emerged in the last two decades. The use of the term “racial profiling” gained popularity in the mid-1990s and originally referred to the use of race as an explicit criterion in “profiles” of offenders that some police organizations issued to guide police officer decision-making ( Engel, Calnon, and Bernard 2001 ; Harris 2006 ). These profiles were used as part of a larger strategy for the “War on Drugs” from the 1980s and 1990s that led to dramatic changes in criminal justice strategies nationally, including the aggressive targeting of drug offenders at the street level and increased rates of incarceration and sentence length ( Scalia 2001 ; Harris 2006 ; Tonry 2011 ). Racial profiling specifically referred to criminal interdiction practices based on drug-courier profiles that were identified and provided to law enforcement officers through federal, state, and local law enforcement training. As part of police efforts to interdict drug trafficking on the nation’s highways, police agencies developed guidelines or “profiles” to help officers identify characteristics of drug couriers that could be used to target drivers and vehicles. This training sometimes identified subjects’ race and ethnicity as part of a larger “profile” of drug courier activity. The focus of this training was on Interstate highways on the East Coast, particularly around the I-95 corridor that linked Miami, Florida with cities and drug distribution points in the major mid-Atlantic and Northeastern cities ( Harris 1999 ; Engel, Calnon, and Bernard 2002 ). Based on this profile, police would make pretextual stops ( Whren v. U.S. , 517 U.S. 806 [1996]) and attempt to establish a legal basis to search for contraband.

Another police tactic resulting from the “War on Drugs” was the increased use of pedestrian stops, along with stop and frisk tactics ( Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 [1968]) to maximize the number of police-citizen encounters with individuals believed to be involved in criminal behavior. These targeted enforcement strategies were especially felt by young minority males, who were disproportionately subject to police surveillance and imprisonment for drug offenses ( Kennedy 1997 ; Walker 2001 ; Harris 2002 ; Tonry 2011 ). The controversy surrounding the aggressive use of traffic and pedestrian stops by police still exists today ( Fagan 2004 ; Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss 2007 ; Ridgeway and MacDonald 2009 ).

17.1.1 The Rise of Data Collection

High-profile litigation efforts in the states of New Jersey ( New Jersey v. Soto , 734 A.2d 350 [1996]) and Maryland ( Wilkins v. Maryland State Police , MJG 93-468 [1993]) alleging racial profiling by law enforcement agencies brought a discussion of these practices to the forefront of American public debate ( GAO 2000 ; Buerger and Farrell 2002 ; Harris 2002 ). Based on the notoriety and successful litigation involving these claims of racial profiling, the public, media, and politicians began to exert pressure on law enforcement to address perceived racial/ethnic bias, particularly as related to traffic stops ( Walker 2001 ; Barlow and Barlow 2002 ; Novak 2004 ). As a result of this pressure, law enforcement agencies and politicians across the country began erecting policies and legislation designed to “eliminate” racial profiling practices by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies ( Harris 2002 , 2006 ; Tillyer, Engel, and Wooldredge 2008 ). These policies were often focused on traffic stops and included mandates to collect data regarding driver and passenger demographics from every traffic stop (regardless of disposition). The data collection efforts originally designed to uncover racial/ethnic disparities in vehicle stops were initiated by litigation, legislative mandate, and proactive action by law enforcement agencies to address community concerns ( Ramirez, McDevitt, and Farrell 2000 ; Davis 2001 ; Davis, Gillis, and Foster 2001 ; Tillyer, Engel, and Cherkauskas 2010 ). As noted by Tillyer et al. (2010) , by 2009, thirty-nine states had passed some form of legislation regarding racial profiling. Specifically, eleven states enacted legislation that prohibited racial profiling, five states mandated traffic-stop data collection, and twelve states both prohibited racial profiling and mandated data collection, while eight states had bills under consideration and three states had other forms of racial profiling policies.

The heavy focus on data collection during traffic stops was based in part on the original definition of racial profiling, but also because of the recognition that traffic stops are the most frequently occurring type of police-citizen interaction and can be initiated for a wide variety of reasons including legal violations, departmental policy requirements, and officer discretion ( Skolnick 1966 ; Walker 2001 ; Meehan and Ponder 2002 ; Alpert, MacDonald, and Dunham 2005 ). Analyses of the Police Public Contact Survey demonstrate that of the 19 percent of citizens surveyed who reported having some form of contact with police, the majority of these citizens (56 percent) indicated that contact occurred as the result of a traffic stop ( Durose, Schmitt, and Langan 2007 ). In addition, police officers have wide and often unfettered discretion when determining when to initiate traffic stops and the outcomes that motorists receive as a result of those stops ( Wilson 1968 ; Ramirez, McDevitt, and Farrell 2000 ; Lundman and Kaufmann 2003 ; Engel and Calnon 2004b ; Novak 2004 ; Engel 2005 ).

When initial claims of racial profiling during traffic stops were leveled against police, it was clear that law enforcement agencies across the country were poorly prepared to demonstrate, document, or defend their current practices. Quite simply, most law enforcement agencies did not routinely collect information about all motorists who were stopped by police, nor did they collect basic demographic information about those who were stopped (including race/ethnicity) ( Ramirez, McDevitt, and Farrell 2000 ). While many agencies did routinely collect information about citations and arrests, this information could not be compared to the population of all motorists stopped by police that did not result in further official action. Likewise, the population of drivers “eligible” to be stopped for traffic violations was also unknown. Described as the “benchmark” problem, the need to compare traffic stops to those eligible to be stopped created a new stream of research across the country ( Walker 2001 ; Engel and Calnon 2004b ). Unfortunately, as noted in more detail below, over two decades of subsequent research produced very little, as the benchmark problem has never been adequately addressed by the research community.

17.1.2 Defining Racial Profiling

The initial narrow focus on “racial profiling” did not adequately address a much larger issue in American police-community relations. Specifically, claims of inappropriate police targeting of minorities for purposes of enhanced criminal apprehension and punishment have been recognized throughout American history. While the term “racial profiling” referred directly to the specific policies and practices in the 1990s of targeting minorities traveling on interstates for increased scrutiny to obtain drug seizures, concerns of racial bias and illegitimate practices by police have existed for many decades. Therefore, researchers recognized the need to broaden the conversation by calling for examinations of all forms of police bias. A more comprehensive definition allowed policy makers, practitioners, and academics to better focus on issues of racial bias beyond drug profiles during traffic stops.

As noted by Fridell and Scott (2005) the term racial profiling has evolved over time. Despite the rather narrow definition of profiling that began with policing drug trafficking, the growing public consensus became that any and all decisions made by officers based solely or partially on the race of the suspect were considered racial profiling. It was this change from a narrowly defined term of profiling to an all-encompassing term that led Fridell et al. (2001) to first introduce the new term. They argued that some past definitions of profiling may have been too restrictive, focusing exclusively on “sole” reliance on race. They noted that police decision making is rarely based on any sole factor, including race. Furthermore, in focus groups with citizens and police officers, Fridell et al. (2001) noted that citizens defined profiling as encompassing any and all demonstrations of racial bias in policing and viewed it as widespread. On the other hand, for police officers “profiling” connoted only the narrow definition of sole reliance on race; therefore, they viewed it as a much rarer occurrence. The differing definitions of profiling led to defensiveness and frustration as the two groups talked past each other, thus the development of the new term, racially biased policing, which Fridell and her colleagues defined as follows: “Racially biased policing occurs when law enforcement inappropriately considers race or ethnicity in deciding with whom and how to intervene in an enforcement capacity.”

As noted by Engel (2008) , economists and other academics have identified two different types of police racial/ethnic bias: 1) “taste discrimination” or “disparate treatment” and 2) “statistical discrimination” or “disparate impact” ( Becker 1957 ; Arrow 1973 ). The difference between these two concepts is based on the individual intentions of police officers—in the former, racial/ethnic discrimination is the direct result of intentional police bias, while in the later, racial/ethnic discrimination is the result of factors other than individual police bias (i.e., deployment patterns, differences based on deployment patterns, offending behavior, etc.) ( Knowles, Perisco, and Todd 2001 ; Ayres 2002 , 2005 ; Persico and Castleman 2005 ). Accurately measuring and classifying these two general types of police bias, however, have proved difficult for researchers. A summary of the evidence regarding racially biased policing is reviewed below.

17.2 The Evidence

Initial systematic research of the police began in the 1950s when a few ethnographic studies reported the realities of policing and the use of discretion. These studies described police agencies and culture (e.g., Wilson 1968 ; Van Maanen 1974 ; Reiss 1983 ; Manning 1997 ); police-citizen encounters (e.g., Skolnick 1966 ; Reiss 1971 ; Muir 1977 ); and the use of coercive power during interactions, particularly with minorities (e.g., Westley 1953 , 1970 ; Skolnick 1966 ; Bayley and Mendelsohn 1969 ; Bittner 1970 ). From this beginning, a body of research emerged that exposed issues surrounding racial bias, abuse of force, corruption, and poor police-community relations ( Bernard and Engel 2001 ). Much of this work was informed by an implicit assumptions that police decision making was inherently biased and exposure of these practices was necessary for reform. Given the tenor of the times, these assumptions are hardly surprising. More importantly, these assumptions created a lasting legacy that is seldom directly challenged in current studies of police decision making.

Over time, a more quantitative body of research developed that examined coercive outcomes of police-citizen encounters (i.e., citations, arrests, use of force) and whether citizens’ characteristics influenced these outcomes. This research evolved from simple bivariate comparisons of police decisions and citizen characteristics (e.g., Pivilian and Briar 1964 ; Black and Reiss 1970 ; Black 1971 ), to the use of multivariate statistical techniques designed to explore the effects of extra-legal factors on police decision making, after controlling for legal factors (e.g., Smith and Visher 1981 ; Smith, Visher, and Davidson 1984 ; Worden 1989 ; Klinger 1994 ; Mastrofski et al. 2000 ). The body of research that emerged compared the impact of legal to extra-legal factors, including the effect of race on police decision making ( Sherman 1980 ; Riksheim and Chermak 1993 ; National Research Council 2004 ).

Although researchers made significant methodological and statistical advances from the 1970s through the 1990s, the actual research questions being asked remained relatively constant. With only a handful of exceptions, this work focused on police decisions to use specific coercive sanctions, including citations, arrests, and use of force. The focus of this research was to determine whether police used their considerable discretion in a morally defensible manner. Summary reviews of this body of research generally indicate that despite differences in measures and methods, a majority of the studies demonstrate legal factors have the largest impact over police behavior ( Gottfredson and Gottfredson 1988 ; Riksheim and Chermak 1993 ; Klinger 1994 ; National Research Council 2004 ). Research has also demonstrated that to a lesser extent, some extra-legal factors impact officer decision making even when legal factors are controlled for; in particular, citizen demographics (including race/ethnicity) have been identified as correlated with some coercive outcomes ( Riksheim and Chermak 1993 ; National Research Council 2004 ).

Based on this larger literature examining police behavior, a growing area of more narrowly focused research has emerged in the last two decades to inform our understanding of “racial profiling” during traffic stops in particular. This research considers stop and search practices (e.g., Fagan and Davies 2000 ; Gould and Mastrofski 2004 ; Alpert, MacDonald, and Dunham 2005 ; Warren and Tomaskovic-Devey 2009 ), and more nuanced decision making points, including the development and interpretation of cues of suspicion ( Alpert, MacDonald, and Dunham 2005 ), and decisions to patrol certain areas ( Tomaskovic-Devey, Mason, and Zingraff 2004 ).

Traffic stop research generally examines two types of police decision making situations: 1) the decision to initiate a traffic stop, and 2) the resolution/disposition of that traffic stop ( Ramirez, McDevitt, and Farrell 2000 ; Smith and Alpert 2002 ). However, given the inherent methodological limitations of examining racial disparities in stop decisions, recent research has focused nearly exclusively on identifying and explaining racial/ethnic disparities in traffic stop outcomes ( Tillyer, Engel, and Wooldredge 2008 ; Tillyer and Engel 2012 ). The findings and limitations of research on stops and post-stop outcomes are reviewed in greater detail below.

17.2.1 Traffic and Pedestrian Stops

Initial research examining racial profiling relied on the use of traffic stop studies to determine racial/ethnic disparities in officers’ decisions to stop motorists. These initial studies reported differences in aggregate rates of stops across racial groups and often interpreted these disparities as evidence of racial discrimination (e.g., Lamberth 1994 , 1997 ). After these initial studies, dozens of published studies and agency reports followed that reported the degree to which police agencies over-stop minority drivers, relative to white drivers ( Fridell 2004 ; Tillyer, Engel, and Wooldredge 2008 ). Over time, however, researchers were more careful to note that while these studies demonstrated racial/ethnic disparities in traffic stops, it could not be determined if these disparities actually represented racial bias by police. Researchers lacked the ability to determine why disparities existed. Rather, researchers focused on establishing a standard basis for determining that particular demographic groups were overrepresented in police stops, by comparing the percentage of drivers of a particular racial/ethnic group to the percentage that are expected to be stopped assuming no bias (i.e., a benchmark) ( Zingraff et al. 2000 ; Engel, Calnon, and Bernard 2002 ; McMahon et al. 2002 ; Smith and Alpert 2002 ; Fridell 2004 ; Rojek, Rosenfeld, and Decker 2004 ; Schafer, Carter, and Katz-Bannister 2004 ; Gaines 2006 ; Tillyer, Engel, and Wooldredge 2008 ).

Benchmark comparisons represent researchers’ attempts to isolate race as an explanatory factor for disparity in traffic stops from the driving quality explanation and other possible alternative factors, including driving quantity, driving location, time of travel, etc. ( Engel, Calnon, and Bernard 2002 ). However, this approach has considerable limitations, the most important of which is the inability to identify and measure a scientifically valid benchmark for comparison purpose ( Walker 2001 ; Engel and Calnon 2004a ; Fridell 2004 ; Tillyer, Engel, and Wooldredge 2008 ; Ridgeway and MacDonald 2009 ). In this effort to rule out factors other than racial discrimination in traffic stop research, social scientists utilized several different data sources to measure comparison groups, some of which were readily available and others that involved initiating new data collection. The most common types of benchmark data include: Residential Census populations, “adjusted” Census populations, official accident data, DMV records of licensed drivers, citizen surveys, internal departmental comparisons, observations of roadway usage, and assessments of traffic violating behavior (for review, see Fridell et al. 2001 ; Walker 2001 ; Engel and Calnon 2004a ; Fridell 2004 ). Each type of data has strengths and limitations as a representative measure of motorists at risk of being stopped by police. Importantly, no benchmark data has demonstrated the ability to adequately measure all the risk factors associated with the likelihood of being stopped and no consensus exists regarding which benchmarks are the most accurate ( Engel and Calnon 2004b ).

Early studies into disparate stop practices often used census data and other official records as the relevant denominator. For example, Verniero and Zoubek (1999) sought to uncover racial bias in the state of New Jersey by comparing the percentage of minority motorists stopped compared to their percentage in the residential population or eligible driving population. Similar analyses were conducted using data from Cincinnati, Ohio ( Browning et al. 1994 ). Both studies reported that minority drivers constituted a greater proportion of stops compared to their representation in the residential population. Later studies marginally improved on this method by using the driving-eligible portion of the population. For example, in an analysis of traffic stops in Richmond, Virginia, Smith and Petrocelli (2001) found that when compared to the driving-eligible population minority motorists were overrepresented in the stop data, concluding that minority motorists were 46 percent more likely to be stopped than nonminority motorists. This finding was echoed by Meehan and Ponder (2002) ; using the alternative measure of observed roadway composition in a mostly-white suburban community, the authors found that the minority drivers were three times more likely to be stopped by the police. Disparities between driving population and stoppage rates were also observed when using spatially-weighted benchmark to account for confounding issues presented by cross-jurisdictional commuters ( Rojek, Rosenfeld, and Decker 2004 ). In an analysis of the greater St. Louis, Missouri area, the authors found concentrated areas of small instances of disparate stop practices, with blacks being more likely to be stopped, searched, and arrested than white and Hispanic motorists in the areas in which a relationship was found.

Disparity via a disproportionate share of stops has been observed in studies of the San Jose and Sacramento Police Departments’ traffic practices as well. During the period of study from July to September 1999, Hispanics represented 43 percent of motorists stopped by police while accounting for just 31 percent of San Jose’s population ( Withrow 2004 ). Similarly, using Census data as a benchmark Greenwald (2001) it was shown that during a one-year period black motorists were stopped by the Sacramento police at greater frequency than justified by their percentage in the general population.

Census data, however, are limited in their ability to measure alternative explanations of racial disparities including factors influencing drivers’ risk of being stopped (e.g., where and when they drive, frequency of driving, what and how they drive) ( Engel and Calnon 2004a ; Gaines 2006 ). The Census’ lack of measures of alternative explanatory factors, however, did not prevent some of the initial studies of traffic stops from prematurely interpreting disparity as discrimination and attributing racial disparities in stops and/or stop outcomes to unmeasured officers’ racial prejudice ( Engel, Calnon, and Bernard 2002 ). Most researchers in the field began to realize, however, that the hypothesis that police are racially biased in their stopping decisions is just one of numerous possible hypotheses or explanations for disparity in stops. Without measuring alternative explanatory factors, researchers cannot determine whether differences in traffic stops and stop outcomes reflect disparity or discrimination ( Engel, Calnon, and Bernard 2002 ).

One suggested reason for these reported racial disparities among stopped motorists is the use of traffic stops as a pretext for criminal or drug interdiction purposes. Some support has been found for this hypothesis in studies of suburban communities ( Meehan and Ponder 2002 ; Novak 2004 ), highlighting that while the correlation of race and the decision to stop is weak, minorities are more likely to be stopped at night and to reside in areas outside where the stop has taken place. This has given rise to a conflict theory-oriented explanation of police behavior (i.e., that police officers disproportionately target minorities when found outside of the areas where they typically reside or travel). Likewise, Petrocelli, Piquero, and Smith (2003) demonstrated that contextual variables, such as a neighborhood’s percentage of black and UCR Part I crime rate, influence the number of stops performed in the area. Subsequently, searches of black suspects in these high-search areas resulted in fewer arrests or summons being issued. This general trend has been shown in self-reported data sources as well. A telephone survey of licensed drivers in North Carolina illustrated differential practices between the local police departments and the North Carolina State Highway Patrol (NCSHP). The decision of local police officers to issue tickets is related to driver age, race, and traffic history, while NCSHP ticketing decisions were driven both by legal factors (i.e., speeding) as well as quasi-legal factors (i.e., driver age and homeownership status) ( Warren et al. 2006 ; Miller 2008 ). Similar (though insignificant) disparities were found by Gaines (2006) in Riverside, California. Reviewing all traffic stops made in 2003, the author established that stops made by traffic units showed no evidence of racial bias, while stops made by patrol and investigative units exhibited slight, statistically insignificant bias. Further, Gaines found that that the stop data correlated strongly with race variables found in neighborhood crime data and received police reports.

Similar findings have been observed in studies of pedestrian stops as well. Using internal benchmarking (i.e., comparing the decisions of one officer to others similarly assigned; Walker 2001 ), Ridgeway and MacDonald (2009) developed a statistical method for identifying potentially problematic officers. These officers were more likely to stop black and Hispanic pedestrians, net of situational characteristics, compared to officers in similar assignments. Of the 2,756 officers whose approximately 500,000 cumulative stops were analyzed, the authors identified only 15 officers (0.54 percent) as significantly more likely to stop minority pedestrians. A multilevel analysis of pedestrian stops in New York City revealed similar patterns. Fagan (2004) found that after controlling arrest rates by race, black and Hispanic pedestrians were stopped more often than white pedestrians. This may be attributable to zero-tolerance policing strategies, the application of which was found to be driven more by neighborhood characteristics including poverty rate, racial makeup, and social disorganization ( Fagan and Davies 2000 ).

Rojek, Rosenfeld, and Decker (2004) sought to correct the problems using Census data as a benchmark by spatially weighting motorists by their residential proximity to the various municipalities under analysis. This was believed to account for the fact that motorists spend more time driving in and around their own neighborhoods, and that race effects could be seen as spurious if observed in a majority-white neighborhood where a disproportionate number of minorities are stopped should that neighborhood abut majority-nonwhite neighborhoods.

Researchers have also developed benchmarks through the use of self-reported citizen surveys. General and purposive surveys have been used in both creating a more accurate composite of individuals’ driving practices as well as recording the nuances of their interaction with the police (e.g., Lundman and Kaufman 2003 ; Miller 2008 ). Citizen surveys offer researchers the benefit of circumnavigating official data collection protocols and observational reports that may fail to capture key variables (such as perceived cause for the stop or officer demeanor) or erroneously categorize the demographic information of the stopped motorist. However, survey response data is prone to errors in recollection, desirability bias, and false reporting ( Engel and Calnon 2004a ).

A shared problem of these various benchmarks, however, is that they do not account for possible racial variations in driving behavior. For example, the differential offending hypothesis holds that certain racial groups may drive more frequently, more aggressively, or in locations with more police presence, and are therefore more likely to attract the attention of law enforcement. The literature offers measured support for this hypothesis; several studies have shown that certain minority subgroups are likely to engage in aggressive driving behaviors at a higher rate and to greater severity than white drivers ( Lange, Blackman, and Johnson 2001 ; Lange, Johnson, and Voas 2005 ; Tillyer and Engel 2012 ).

In summary, the available analyses of traffic stop data have rather consistently demonstrated racial disparities in stopping patterns ( Engel and Johnson 2006 ; Warren et al. 2006 ; Tillyer, Engel, and Wooldredge 2008 ). However, the methodological and analytical problems associated with this body of research are now widely recognized, including the inherent limitations associated with using benchmarks to determine racial disparities in vehicle stops ( Walker 2001 ; Engel, Calnon, and Bernard 2002 ; Engel and Calnon 2004a ; Fridell 2004 ; Tillyer, Engel, and Wooldredge 2008 ; Ridgeway and MacDonald 2009 ). As a result, research emphasis shifted away from examining officers’ initial decisions to stop motorists and more toward officers’ decisions during the stop (e.g., issuing citations, making arrests, and conducting searches). The study of traffic stop outcomes allowed for the use of more robust analytical techniques including multivariate analysis ( Tillyer, Engel, and Wooldredge 2008 ).

17.2.2 Traffic and Pedestrian Stop Outcomes

Many researchers examining racial bias by police have reinvigorated the study of post-stop outcomes, including citations, arrests, and searches. This shift in focus may be due in part to the inherent methodological and statistical problems associated with examining racial disparities in traffic and pedestrian stops. Additionally, some have argued that racial/ethnic bias may be more likely to manifest itself after an initial stop is made and officers interact with citizens ( Ramirez, McDevitt, and Farrell 2000 ; Alpert et al. 2006 ). As noted previously, research examining arrests dominated the policing literature in the 1970s and 1980s. Academics interested in examining racial profiling simply applied the widely used statistical techniques of multivariate regression modeling used in previous examinations of systematic social observation data to current studies using traffic and pedestrian stop data.

17.2.2.1 Citations and Arrests

Rather than focusing on stop or search decisions, the earliest exploration of racially-biased police practices examined the effect of race in the issuance of formal sanctions, such as citations and arrests. The evidence generated regarding the impact of drivers’ race over the likelihood of citations has been mixed. While most studies have reported that drivers’ race has a significant impact over citations, the direction of these reported findings have been both positive and negative ( Tillyer and Engel 2012 ). While some studies have demonstrated that minority drivers were more likely to be cited compared to whites ( Smith et al. 2003 ; Engel, Cherkauskas, and Tillyer 2007 ; Ingram 2007 ), other research suggests that black drivers were less likely to be cited ( Alpert Group 2004 ; Engel et al. 2007 ; Lovrich, et al. 2007 ; Tillyer and Engel 2012 ). These results also varied across racial groups. For example, Alpert et al. (2006) reported that Hispanics, Asian, and Native American drivers were more likely to be cited, while black drivers were less likely to be cited, compared to whites. As a result, there appears to be little consistency regarding the reported influence of race/ethnicity over the likelihood of being issued citations during traffic stops. As concerned in the context of possible police bias, this mixed evidence correlates with differing hypotheses regarding the likely direction of the effect ( Tillyer and Engel 2012 ). Some have suggested that minorities are more likely to be cited once stopped as a form of enhanced punishment. Others have suggested that minorities may be more likely than whites to be stopped as a pretext for criminal interdiction purposes, and then are released with a warning.

Studies examining the impact of race on arrests during traffic and pedestrian stops have been slightly more consistent. Tillyer and Engel (2012) reported that most traffic stop studies found that minority drivers were between 1.5 and 2.6 times more likely to be arrested compared to similarly situated white drivers ( Smith and Petrocelli 2001 ; Withrow 2004 ; Alpert et al., 2006 ). A few studies, however, have reported no racial disparities in arrest (e.g., Alpert Group 2004 ; Engel et al. 2006 ; Tillyer and Engel 2012 ). Other studies suggest that arrest decisions are impacted by both citizen and officer race. For example, Brown and Frank’s (2006) analysis of police-citizen encounters in Cincinnati, Ohio found that after controlling for characteristics of the officer and citizen along with contextual effects, black officers were more likely to arrest black citizens, while white officers are equally likely to arrest both black and white citizens.

In sum, the body of science surrounding racially-biased policing is generally seen as inconclusive ( National Research Council 2004 ). Most recently however, in a meta-analysis of 40 arrest studies using 23 different datasets, Kochel, Wilson, and Mastrofski (2011) systematically computed an effect size for the effect of race in arrest decisions net of offense severity, demeanor, intoxication, and other factors. The researchers reported “with confidence that the results are not mixed. Race matters.” This declaration was based on observed effect sizes ranging from 1.32 to 1.52 (498). The study concluded that blacks were 30 percent more likely be arrested compared to whites, even after controlling for other factors. The authors noted that although previous policing experts have described the collective research findings as “mixed” regarding the effects of race (e.g., Riksheim and Chermak 1993 ; National Research Council 2004 ; Rosich 2007 ), their comprehensive review of the available research, however, is necessarily limited by the quality of the individual studies reviewed. Due to the nature of meta-analysis as a technique, the quality of the meta-analytic results is based on the quality of the individual studies included in the meta-analysis ( Gendreau and Smith 2007 ). Further, their analyses cannot systematically explain why, how, and when race matters in arrest decisions, only that it does.

Specific to traffic and pedestrian stops, the research available generally shows an inconsistent impact of race over the likelihood of issued citations. In contrast, the impact of race over the likelihood of arrest during traffic and pedestrian stops appears to be more consistent, demonstrating racial disparities in arrest decisions. Further, the bulk of the available research demonstrates that minorities (and especially blacks) continue to be arrested at much higher rates than their representation in the general population (Engel and Swartz, forthcoming). Whether this disparity is the result of police bias, however, remains a point of contention throughout the research community.

17.2.2.2 Searches and Seizures

Beyond the decision to stop a minority motorist, racial profiling could potentially manifest itself in officers’ decisions to search. While extant Fourth Amendment precedent limits the utility of contraband discovered outside of reasonable or warranted searches, officers may seek consent to search an individual’s person, effects, or automobile. The relationship between race and search likelihood has been observed across a multitude of jurisdictions, using qualitative and quantitative analyses on both official and unofficial data sources. The bulk of scholarship examining traffic searches suggests that minority motorists are more likely to be searched compared with other racial groups ( Rojek, Rosenfeld, and Decker 2004 ; Withrow 2004 ; Engel and Johnson 2006 ; Roh and Robinson 2009 ; cf. Smith and Petrocelli 2001 ; Paoline and Terrill 2005 ; Schafer et al. 2006 ).

Engel and Johnson’s (2006) review of agency reports from twelve different state highway police/patrol agencies demonstrated consistently higher rates of minority searches compared to white drivers stopped for traffic offenses. For example, using data from the Washington State Patrol, Pickerell, Mosher, and Pratt (2009) found that black and Hispanic drivers were more likely to be searched compared to white drivers, regardless of the reason for the search. Close and Mason’s (2007) examination of traffic stop data from the Florida Highway Patrol also showed that black and Hispanic drivers were more likely to be searched compared to white drivers, irrespective of the search type.

Examining interaction effects using college campus data, Moon and Corley (2007) found that black male students were more likely to be searched compared to their white counterparts. Based on results from propensity score matching, Ridgeway (2006) reported that black motorists were twice as likely as whites to be searched based on probable cause in Oakland, California. And most recently, Rojek, Rosenfeld, and Decker (2012) reported that young, black males were more likely to be searched compared to young white males during traffic stops in St. Louis, Missouri and Cincinnati, Ohio. Likewise, analyses of survey data from the Police Public Contact Survey indicated that younger drivers, male drivers, and minority drivers all reported higher rates of search compared with other drivers ( Engel and Calnon 2004a ). Similar racial disparities in search rates have been reported in survey and qualitative research ( Brunson 2007 ; Brunson and Weitzer 2009 ).

Despite these consistent findings, Tillyer, Klahm, and Engel (2012) identified several limitations of the analyses examining racial disparities in search rates. First, many studies did not separate mandatory from discretionary searches. Mandatory searches (e.g., searches incident to arrest, inventory searches, etc.) are required by departmental policy and should not be included in analyses designed to examine officer discretion. Second, as with other post-stop analyses, the statistical analyses of searches often are misspecified due to the omitted variable problem (cf. Mustard 2003 ; Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss 2007 ). Third, examinations of officer search behavior is often based on pooled variance models ( Lundman 2003 ; Alpert, Dunham, and Smith 2007 ; Moon and Corley 2007 ), without taking into account the nested nature of traffic stop data that requires the use of hierarchical models. Finally, as with studies of citations and arrests, research examining searches is often not guided by a theoretical framework necessary to understand the reasons for racial disparities in search rates ( Engel, Calnon, and Bernard 2002 ; Tomaskovic-Devey, Mason, and Zingraff 2004 ; Engel and Johnson 2006 ).

The current discussion regarding racial profiling has also shifted from examinations of stops, benchmarks, and search rates, to examinations of contraband seizures during searches. A “hit rate” commonly refers to the percentage of searches conducted by police that result in discoveries of contraband ( Engel 2008 ). In addition to criminologists and legal scholars, economists have entered the racial profiling debate by publishing articles using police vehicle and pedestrian stop, search and seizure data in an effort to determine racial and ethnic discrimination at the hands of the police. Specifically, economists have argued that a statistical comparison of search success rates can be used to distinguish between statistical discrimination and officer bias ( Knowles, Persico, and Todd 2001 ; Ayres 2002 ; Persico and Castleman 2005 ; Persico and Todd 2006 ). The economic perspective explicitly suggests that if one racial/ethnic group is found to be more involved in criminal activity, members of that racial/ethnic group should be subjected to increased police scrutiny in an effort to maximize police resources and increase the rates of discovering contraband. Therefore, under these economic principles, a difference in search rates across racial/ethnic groups is tolerable if the rates of recovering contraband across racial groups are statistically equivalent ( Knowles, Persico, and Todd 2001 ; Anwar and Fang 2006 ).

To identify racial/ethnic discrimination, the analytical strategy utilized is a statistical comparison of search outcomes across racial/ethnic groups, commonly referred to as the “outcome test” ( Ayres 2002 ). If the hit rates are different across racial/ethnic groups, economists argued this is evidence of discrimination ( Knowles, Persico and Todd 2001 ; Ayres 2002 ; Hernandez-Murillo and Knowles 2004 ; Persico and Castleman 2005 ; Anwar and Fang 2006 ; Persico and Todd 2006 ). Using the outcome test method, most studies have reported that first, minorities are more likely to be searched, and second, when searched, minorities are less likely to be found with contraband compared to whites. However, the use of the outcome test as a tool to determine police discrimination has been met with sharp criticism. As noted by criminologists and economists, many of the underlying assumptions required by the statistical model do not coincide with what is known about decision-making during police-citizen encounters, and further the underlying conditions necessary to support the outcome test cannot be met (Anwar and Fang 2004; Dharmapala and Ross 2004 ; Hernandez-Murillo and Knowles 2004 ; Engel 2008 ; Engel and Tillyer 2008 ; Antonovics and Knight 2009 ).

Nevertheless, the accumulating evidence that minorities are more likely to be searched, but less likely to be discovered with contraband begs the question why ? Why are minority citizens searched more frequently for discretionary reasons, but less frequently found to be carrying contraband? The outcome test assumes the response is officer bias, but there are many other potential contributing factors ( Engel 2008 ). Questioning why racial disparities exist demonstrates the severe limitation of this body of research—a nearly exclusive focus on outcome , rather than process . Studying the process of officer decision making is crucial to fully developing an understanding of the relationship between citizen race/ethnicity and police behavior. Unpacking and understanding the process of officer decision making is the next great challenge in understanding police discretion and is rooted in the existence of officer suspicion (e.g., Alpert Group 2004 ; Alpert, MacDonald, and Dunham 2005 ).

17.3 The Future

As noted above, the empirical body of evidence available has clearly demonstrated the routine existence of racial and ethnic disparities in stops, citations, arrests, and searches in police agencies across the country. What remains in debate, however, is whether these racial/ethnic disparities are indicative of officer bias. Unfortunately, our research methods and statistical analyses thus far cannot determine officers’ motivation and intent, and therefore cannot determine racial bias and discrimination. While researchers can identify patterns and trends of disparities, we cannot readily determine the causes of these disparities. This is, of course, a critical limitation of social scientific research in this area. And, as a result, our current research cannot readily assist police agencies with the difficult task of developing policies and procedures designed to reduce racial disparities.

In the majority of studies examining bias-based policing, academics typically acknowledge these limitations of their research designs and statistical techniques, while simultaneously noting the importance of their work as adding to the accumulating body of research. Academics then often advocate for more of the same types of research to continue this incremental advancement in knowledge. In contrast to these recommendations, we believe a significant departure from the existing line of research in this area is necessary to advance the field. It appears to us that the current research has exhausted its value, particularly to practitioners struggling to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in police outcomes. Incremental increases in knowledge based on analyses of new data from traffic stop studies, or slight changes in the measurement of variables in yet one more multivariate statistical equation used to model stops, citations, arrests, and searches will not address the overarching methodological limitations that plague this line of research. We agree with Piquero (2009, 376) that “there should be a high priority of focused theoretical and research efforts that use multiple methods to generate a careful description and understanding of police-citizen encounters, as well as the myriad of factors that influence both police and citizen decisions.” We further note that repeated application of the statistical technique du jour (e.g., outcome tests, propensity score matching, hierarchical linear modeling, etc.) also will not solve the underlying benchmark problem, nor will it address why racial/ethnic disparities persist despite multiple forms of police intervention. After over two decades of focused research on racial profiling, the research community is no closer to assisting practitioners in the reduction of racial/ethnic disparities than we were in the early 1990s.

While patterns of racial/ethnic disparities have been routinely identified and confirmed, research dedicated to understanding why these patterns exist has been limited. Despite the abundance of academic study devoted to this topic, researchers have limited theories to explain the mounting evidence of racial/ethnic disparities. Although some researchers developed partial theories to explain these disparities post hoc (e.g., Parker et al. 2004 ; Tomaskovic-Devey, Mason, and Zingraff 2004 ; Warren et al. 2006 ; Smith and Alpert 2007 ), these theories have not been adequately tested ( Tillyer and Engel 2012 ). As a result, researchers continue to struggle with determining why disparities exist in coercive outcomes during police-citizen encounters (Engel and Swartz, forthcoming).

Importantly, there is also little evidence available to suggest that the frequency of racial disparities have been reduced as a result of research efforts, or based on changes in police policies, procedures, and training. National estimates of the rates of police-citizen contacts with minorities have remained relatively stable over time ( Langan et al. 2001 ; Durose, Scmitt, and Langan 2005 , 2007 ), suggesting there have not been significant reductions in racial disparities despite years of attention by legislatures, police administrators, academics, and the public. The only other study attempting to examine this issue suffers from severe methodological constraints. Although Warren and Tomaskovic-Devey (2009) reported that racial disparities in hit rates decreased as a result of media attention and changes in legislation in North Carolina, they did not control for any other rival explanations—including changes in specific training, supervisory oversight, departmental policies, among many others—and further were unable to properly establish time ordering to demonstrate cause and effect (Piquero 2009). Therefore, despite this important first step forward taken by Warren and Tomaskovic-Devery (2009) in an attempt to address these issues, the impact of specific attempts to reduce officer bias remains untested.

Further, we believe that even using new statistical techniques in racial profiling research that are promising (e.g., Ridgeway and MacDonald 2010 ) will not result in significant progress until theories of police discretion grounded in the daily work of police officers are developed and applied to this research (Engel and Swartz, forthcoming). As clearly articulated by Piquero (2009, 372),

the science of racial profiling research rests on a weak data and knowledge base, and although there has been some important methodological/statistical progress, we are likely not yet in a position to reach definitively any strong set of conclusions concerning whether racial profiling exists (even if we can arrive at some working definition and operationalization of it) and most certainly which set of policies can diminish and/or eliminate the explicit/sole use of race/ethnicity in police decision making.

Therefore, the challenges that remain for both research and practice are considerable.

17.3.1 A New Research Agenda

It is based on this review of the state of research in bias-based policing that we call for new approaches and changes in our current research agenda. In short, we argue that it is time to advance research that will better aid practitioners interested in reducing racial/ethnic disparities. A similar argument was made fifteen years ago by Sherman (1998) when he advocated for the use of science to help the police find humane crime fighting practices rather than simply look for failures in policing. That Sherman felt compelled to justify the moral soundness of police crime reduction research illustrates how radical this idea was at the time. This also led to the changing of the core research questions that were being asked by prominent researchers in the field and promoted the evidence-based movement in policing ( Weisburd and Neyroud 2011 ). In the same vein, we argue that rather than continually documenting racial/ethnic disparities in police stops and stop outcomes (e.g., citations, arrests, searches), academics should pursue and advance research specifically designed to reduce racial/ethnic disparities in police decision making and then test the results. How do we know, for example, that the changes in police policies, procedures, and training recommended by researchers have any impact on police behavior? Police agencies across the country spent millions of dollars on changes to policies and training designed to eliminate racial profiling—has it had an impact? The research community has been silent on these critical issues. Many academics, private companies, former practitioners, etc. provide training for police agencies to reduce racial profiling; yet are these trainings effective?

The research questions that must be addressed are: (1) why racial disparities persist in the outcomes of police-citizen encounters, and (2) what works to reduce these disparities. To address these questions, we propose the advancement of a research agenda that includes the implementation of stronger research designs, greater use of mixed methods and qualitative research, and increased use of panel-wave and longitudinal data.

First, the selection of strong research designs is critical, though the selection of the appropriate design should be guided by the questions asked rather than simply relying on external standards. The considerable advances in police effectiveness research, compared to racial profiling research, is due in part to the use of strong quasi-experimental designs, and when appropriate, randomized controlled trials. There is no reason these designs cannot be applied to study the impact of policies, procedures, and training on racial bias. The type of research proposed might include pre- or post-tests of the impact of different policies, procedures, and training implemented by police agencies, or even quasi-experimental designs where some officers, units, etc. are provided specialized training and others are not. Changes in officers’ attitudes, levels of racial disparities in stops, post-stop outcome measures, and citizens’ perceptions could all be measured outcomes. This is not to suggest that other research designs have no value. To the contrary, many important topics cannot be examined with randomized controlled trials or even strong quasi-experiments. But to say that there is a place for all systematic methods is not to say that any method can be fruitfully applied to any question, or that all research methods are created equal. Concerns over police discrimination against minorities can be, and must be, translated into falsifiable and therefore testable hypotheses.

Moreover, research has demonstrated that citizens’ experiences during police-citizen encounters significantly influence their attitudes toward law enforcement ( Brandl, Frank, Worden, and Bynum 1994 ; Weitzer and Tuch 2004 , 2005 ; Engel 2005 ). Given that citizens’ contact with police is most likely to occur as the result of a traffic stop ( Durose, Schmitt, and Langan 2007 ), coupled with the impact that these contacts have on the formation of citizen attitudes, perceptions of racial/ethnic disparities within this context could seriously undermine police legitimacy ( Tillyer and Engel 2012 ). Therefore, researchers might also focus on testing the impact of particular focused policing strategies on citizens’ perceptions of racial bias and police legitimacy. Additionally, police research that examines effectiveness (often measured as reductions in crime) might also include measures of changes in disparate outcomes as an indicator of success. In short, we argue that our collective research agenda should be expanded to focus on research that will assist in the reduction of racial/ethnic disparities, and increases in legitimacy and transparency in policing (e.g., Weitzer and Tuch 2004 , 2005 ; Tyler 2006 ) rather than simply continuing to document racial/ethnic disparities in stops and stop outcomes.

Second, prior to the development of testable interventions, studies of police bias will inevitably rely on non-experimental approaches. But to better understand racial bias, we clearly need to better use mixed method and qualitative examinations of police decision making. In this regard, direct observation of the police, their decision making, and their interactions with the public is critical. Some promising research in this area includes rich qualitative work (e.g., Kennedy 1997 ; Brunson and Miller 2006 ; Brunson and Stewart 2006 ; Engel et al. 2007 ) that helps provide context and may stimulate further theoretical development. This work successfully expands the initial research questions asked in the biased-based policing literature to incorporate police legitimacy research.

It should now be clear to the research community that black box evaluations and secondary data analyses without detailed descriptions of the original data collection effort are seldom helpful. It is essential to capture information about the process so that practitioners can implement and researchers can replicate. For example, a recent study showed that police removal of homeless encampments may have lowered crime ( Berk and MacDonald 2010 ), but the results are unlikely to help policy makers because of inadequate descriptions of the intervention, outcomes, setting, and mechanisms ( Eck 2010 ). Further, this study led to uninformed speculations on the nature of the intervention ( White 2010 ), which in turn led police administrators to question “who will police the criminologists” ( Beck, Bratton, and Kelling 2011 ). Though this example comes from the police effectiveness literature, the same sort of problems exist in racial profiling research when secondary data sets are used and the researchers neither directly observed the police nor understand the details of how the data were collected, and consequently cannot sufficiently describe or understand police decision making.

Longitudinal studies, such as those using panel or time-series designs, show promise in addressing many of the methodological shortcomings found in the current body of research. Unfortunately, these types of data are very limited and attempts to compile an applicable dataset would introduce a host of measurement issues, as independent data sources vary widely. One promising research endeavor is the National Institute of Justice’s recently funded National Police Research Platform ( Rosenbaum, Schuck, and Cordner 2011 ). Providing researchers with longitudinal data on police practice will allow analyses to model the effects of changes in training protocol, workforce changes, and officer perception over time ( National Research Council 2004 ).

17.3.2 Conclusion

Fridell and Scott (2005) have suggested that police administrators need to be concerned about three ways that issues of police racial bias might manifest themselves: “Bad apple” officers, well-intentioned officers in need of guidance, and institutional practices or policies that might inadvertently contribute to the problem. Each involves different types of agency responses to identify and correct the problems. Fridell and Scott identified seven areas that police agencies can consider for responses to racially biased policing: (1) institutional practices and priorities; (2) accountability and supervision; (3) recruitment and hiring; (4) education and training; (5) minority community outreach; (6) policies prohibiting racially biased policing; and (7) data collection. Within each of these categories are a set of reasonable recommendations that, on their face, are believed to reduce police bias. Yet the evidence regarding the actual impact of these recommendations is nearly non-existent. A closer look at the available research surrounding these recommendations demonstrates that we are often operating in the dark. For example, only a handful of studies have considered the impact of recruitment, training, and education, on police behavior generally, and even fewer have focused specifically on reducing biased policing (e.g., Worden 1990 ; Sun 2002 ; Engel and Worden 2003 ). The same critique regarding the lack of evidence can be applied to each of the categories noted by Fridell and Scott (2005) .

Fridell and Scott concluded their article by arguing that “law enforcement has never been better situated to address these issues” (2005, 359) and that “the police are more capable than ever of effectively detecting and addressing police racial bias” (2005, 343). However, based on the lack of available evidence to guide practitioners, we are less optimistic at this stage. While many agencies can readily identify racial/ethnic disparities, they often cannot detect bias, and they further cannot determine why these disparities exist or how to effectively reduce them. Further, as police agencies continue to promote and advance practices that have demonstrated effectiveness (e.g., hot spots and other types of focused policing strategies), it is likely that racial/ethnic disparities in stops and stop outcomes will continue or perhaps even increase based on differential offending patterns and saturation patrols in predominately minority areas ( Engel, Smith, and Cullen 2012 ). This is not to suggest that Fridell and Scott’s identified categories to reduce police bias are inaccurate; we agree that these areas are ripe for reform and that changes in these areas have the potential to reduce racial bias in policing. Rather we argue that specific guidance based on social scientific evidence regarding the types of training, practices, recruitment, policies, supervision, education, etc. to reduce police bias currently does not exist. This is where, we believe, our research community should focus if we are serious about both the role of science in policing and the need to reduce racial/ethnic bias in policing.

Alpert, Geoffrey , Elizabeth Becker , Mark Gustafson , Alan Meister , Michael Smith , and Bruce Strombom . 2006 . Pedestrian and Motor Vehicle Post-stop Data Analysis Report . Los Angeles: Analysis Group.

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Alpert, Geoffrey , Roger Dunham , and Michael Smith . 2007 . “ Investigating Racial Profiling by the Miami-Dade Police Department: A Multimethod Approach. ” Criminology and Public Policy 6:25–56.

Alpert, Geoffrey , John MacDonald , and Roger Dunham . 2005 . “ Police Suspicion and Discretionary Decision Making During Citizen Stops. ” Criminology 43:407–34.

Alpert Group. 2004. “Miami-Dade Police Department Racial Profiling Study.” Retrieved from http://www.policeforum.org/library/racially-biased-policing/supplemental-resources/Alpert_MDPDRacialProfilingStudy[1].pdf , November 5, 2012.

Antonovics, Kate , and Brian Knight . 2009 . “ A New Look at Racial Profiling: Evidence from the Boston Police Department. ” The Review of Economics and Statistics 91:163–77.

Anwar, Shamena , and Hanming Fang . 2006 . “ An Alternative Test of Racial Prejudice in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence. ” The American Economic Review 96:127–51.

Arrow, Kenneth . 1973 . “The Theory of Discrimination.” In Discrimination in Labor Markets , edited by O. Ashenfelter and A. Rees , 1–33. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Ayres, Ian . 2002 . Pervasive Prejudice? Unconventional Evidence of Racial and Gender Discrimination . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. 2005 . “ Three Tests for Measuring Unjustified Disparate Impacts in Organ Donation: The Problem of ‘Included Variable’ Bias. ” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 48:S68–S87.

Barlow, David , and Melissa Barlow . 2002 . “ Racial Profiling: A Survey of African American Police Officers. ” Police Quarterly 5:334–58.

Bayley, David , and Harold Mendelsohn . 1969 . Minorities and the Police . New York: Free Press.

Bayley, David , and Christine Nixon . 2010 . The Changing Environment for Policing: 1985–2008 . Washington, DC: Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice.

Beck, Charlie , William Bratton , and George Kelling . 2011. “Who Will Police the Criminologists?” City Journal 21.2. Retrieved from: http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_2_snd-criminology.html , November 5, 2012.

Becker, Gary . 1957 . The Economics of Discrimination . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Berk, Richard , and John MacDonald . 2010 . “ Policing the Homeless: An Evaluation of Efforts to Reduce Homeless-related Crime. ” Criminology and Public Policy 9:813–40.

Bernard, Tom , and Robin Engel . 2001 . “ Conceptualizing Criminal Justice Theory. ” Justice Quarterly 18:1–30.

Bittner, Egon . 1970 . The Functions of Police in Modern Society . Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Black, Donald . 1971 . “ The Boundaries of Legal Sociology. ” Yale Law Journal 81:1086–100.

Black, Donald , and Albert Reiss . 1970 . “ Police Control of Juveniles. ” American Sociological Review 35:63–77.

Brandl, Steven , James Frank , Robert Worden , and Timothy Bynum . 1994 . “ Global and Specific Attitudes Toward the Police: Disentangling the Relationship. ” Justice Quarterly 11:119–34.

Brown, Robert , and James Frank . 2006 . “ Race and Officer Decision Making: Examining Differences in Arrest Outcomes Between Black and White Officers. ” Justice Quarterly 23:96–126.

Browning, Sandra , Francis Cullen , Liquan Cao , Renee Kopache , and Thomas Stevenson . 1994 . “ Race and Getting Hassled by the Police: A Research Note. ” Police Studies 17:1–11.

Brunson, Rod . 2007 . “ ‘Police Don’t Like Black People’: African-American Young Men’s Accumulated Police Experiences. ” Criminology and Public Policy 6:71–102.

Brunson, Rod , and Jody Miller . 2006 . “ Gender, Race, and Urban Policing: The Experience of African American Youths. ” Gender and Society 20:531–52.

Brunson, Rod , and Eric Stewart . 2006 . “ Young African American Women, the Street Code, and Violence: An Exploratory Analysis. ” Journal of Crime and Justice 29:1–19.

Brunson, Rod , and Ronald Weitzer . 2009 . “ Police Relations with Black and White Youth in Different Urban Neighborhoods. ” Urban Affairs Review 44:858–85.

Buerger, Michael , and Michael Farrell . 2002 . “ The Evidence of Racial Profiling: Interpreting Documented and Unofficial Sources. ” Police Quarterly 5:272–305.

Close, Billy , and Patrick Mason . 2007 . “ Searching for Efficient Enforcement: Officer Characteristics and Racially Biased Policing. ” Review of Law and Economics 3:263–321.

Davis, Ronald . 2001 . What Does the Data Mean? Alexandria, VA: National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.

Davis, Ronald , Ida Gillis , and Maurice Foster . 2001 . A NOBLE Perspective: Racial Profiling—A Symptom of Bias-based Policing . Alexandria, VA: National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.

Dharmapala, Dhammika , and Stephen Ross . 2004 . “ Racial Bias in Motor Vehicle Searches: Additional Theory and Evidence. ” Contributions to Economic Analysis and Policy 3:1–23.

Durose, Matthew , Erica Schmitt , and Patrick Langan . 2005 . Contacts between Police and the Public: Findings from the 2002 National Survey . Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

———. 2007 . Contact Between Police and the Public, 2005 . Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Eck, John . 2010 . “ Policy Is in the Details: Using External Validity to Help Policy Makers. ” Criminology and Public Policy 9:859–66.

Engel, Robin . 2005 . “ Citizens’ Perceptions of Procedural and Distributive Injustice During Traffic Stops with Police. ” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 42:445–81.

———. 2008 . “ A Critique of the Outcome Test in Racial Profiling Research. ” Justice Quarterly 25:1–36.

Engel, Robin , and Jennifer Calnon . 2004 a. “ Examining the Influences of Drivers’ Characteristics During Traffic Stops with Police: Results from a National Survey. ” Justice Quartly 21:49–90.

———. 2004 b. “ Comparing Benchmark Methodologies for Police-citizen Contacts: Traffic Stop Data Collection for the Pennsylvania State Police. ” Police Quarterly 7:97–125.

Engel, Robin , Jennifer Calnon , and Thomas Bernard . 2002 . “ Theory and Racial Profiling: Shortcomings and Future Directions in Research. ” Justice Quarterly 19:249–73.

Engel, Robin , Jennifer Cherkauskas , and Rob Tillyer . 2007 . Traffic Stop Data Analysis Study Final Report: Literature Review and Review of Other Jurisdictions . Phoenix, AZ: Submitted to the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

Engel, Robin , James Frank , Rob Tillyer , and Charles Klahm . 2006 . Cleveland Division of Police Traffic Stop Data Study: Final Report . Cleveland, OH: Submitted to the City of Cleveland, Division of Police, Office of the Chief.

Engel, Robin , and Richard Johnson . 2006 . “ Toward a Better Understanding of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Search and Seizure Rates. ” Journal of Criminal Justice 34:605–17.

Engel, Robin , Michael Smith , and Francis Cullen . 2012 . “ Race, Place, and Drug Enforcement: Reconsidering the Impact of Citizen Complaints and Crime Rates on Drug Arrests. ” Criminology and Public Policy 11:603–35.

Engel, Robin , and Kristin Swartz . Forthcoming. “Race, Crime, and Policing.” In Oxford Handbook on Ethnicity, Crime, and Immigration , edited by S. Bucerius and Michael Tonry . New York: Oxford University Press.

Engel, Robin , Rob Tillyer , Jennifer Cherkauskas , and James Frank . 2007 . Traffic Stop Data Analysis Study: Year 1 Final Report . Submitted to the Arizona Department of Public Safety, Phoenix, AZ: University of Cincinnati.

Engel, Robin , and Robert Worden . 2003 . “ Police Officers’ Attitudes, Behavior, and Supervisory Influences: An Analysis of Problem Solving. ” Criminology 41:131–66.

Fagan, Jeffrey . 2004 . “ An Analysis of the NYPD’s Stop-and-frisk Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias. ” Columbia Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers , no. 0959:1–22.

Fagan, Jeffrey , and Garth Davies . 2000 . “ Street Stops and Broken Windows: Terry, Race, and Disorder in New York City. ” Fordham Urban Law Journal 28:457–504.

Fridell, Lorie . 2004 . By the Numbers: A Guide for Analyzing Race Data from Vehicle Stops. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.

Fridell, Lorie , Bob Lunney , Drew Diamond , Bruce Kubu , Michael Scott , and Colleen Laing . 2001 . Racially Biased Policing: A Principled Response . Washington, DC: The Police Executive Research Forum.

Fridell, Lorie , and Mike Scott . 2005 . “Law Enforcement Agency Responses to Racially Biased Police and the Perceptions of Its Practice.” In Critical Issues in Policing , edited by Roger Dunham and Geoffrey Alpert , 304–321. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Gaines, Larry . 2006 . “ An Analysis of Traffic Stop Data in Riverside, California. ” Police Quarterly 9:210–33.

Gelman, Andrew , Jeffrey Fagan , and Alex Kiss . 2007 . “ An Analysis of the New York City Police Department’s ‘Stop-and-frisk’ Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias. ” Journal of the American Statistical Association 102:813–23.

Gendreau, Paul , and Paula Smith . 2007 . “ Influencing the ‘People Who Count’: Some Perspectives on the Reporting of Meta-analytic Results for Prediction and Treatment Outcomes with Offenders. ” Criminal Justice and Behavior 34:1536–59.

General Accounting Office [GAO]. 2000 . Racial Profiling: Limited Data Available on Motorist Stops . Washington DC: General Accounting Office.

Gottfredson, Michael , and Don Gottfredson . 1988 . Decision Making in Criminal Justice: Toward the Rational Exercise of Discretion . New York: Plenum Press.

Gould, Jon , and Stephen Mastrofski . 2004 . “ Suspect Searches: Assessing Police Behavior Under the U.S. Constitution. ” Criminology and Public Policy 3:315–62.

Greenwald, Howard . 2001 . Final Report: Police Vehicle Stops in Sacramento, California. Los Angeles: University of Sourthern California, School of Policy, Planning, and Development.

Harris, David . 1999 . “ The Stories, the Statistics, and the Law: Why ‘Driving While Black’ Matters. ” Minnesota Law Review 54:265–326.

———. 2002 . Profiles in Injustice: Why Racial Profiling Cannot Work. New York: New Press.

———. 2006 . “ U.S. Experiences with Racial and Ethnic Profiling: History, Current Issues, and the Future. ” Critical Criminology 14:213–39.

Hernandez-Murillo, Ruben , and John Knowles . 2004 . “ Racial Profiling or Racist Policing? Bounds Tests in Aggregate Data. ” International Economic Review 45:959–89.

Ingram, Jason . 2007 . “ The Effect of Neighborhood Characteristics on Traffic Citation Practices of the Police. ” Police Quarterly 10:371–93.

Kennedy, Randall . 1997 . Race, Crime, and the Law . New York: Vintage Books.

Kerner Commission. 1968 . Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. New York: Bantam Books.

Klinger, David . 1994 . “ Demeanor or Crime? Why ‘Hostile’ Citizens Are More Likely to Be Arrested. ” Criminology 32:475–93.

Knowles, John , Nicola Perisco , and Petra Todd . 2001 . “ Racial Bias in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence. ” Journal of Political Economy 109:203–29.

Kochel, Tammy , David Wilson , and Stephen Mastrofski . 2011 . “ Effect of Suspect Race on Officers’ Arrest Decisions. ” Criminology 49:473–512.

Lamberth, John . 1994 . Revised Statistical Analysis of the Incidence of Police Stops and Arrests of Black Drivers/Travelers on the New Jersey Turnpike Between Exits or Interchanges 1 and 3 from the Years 1998 through 1991. New York: American Civil Liberties Union.

———. 1997 . Report of John Lamberth. New York: American Civil Liberties Union.

Langan, Patrick , Lawrence Greenfeld , Steven Smith , Matthew Durose , and David Levin . 2001 . Contacts between Police and the Public: Findings from the 1999 National Survey. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Lange, James , Kenneth Blackman , and Mark Johnson . 2001 . Speed Violation Survey of the New Jersey Turnpike: Final Report. Trenton, NJ: Office of the Attorney General.

Lange, James , Mark Johnson , and Robert Voas . 2005 . “ Testing the Racial Profiling Hypothesis for Seemingly Disparate Traffic Stops on the New Jersey Turnpike. ” Justice Quarterly 22:193–223.

Lovrich, Nicholas , Michael Gaffney , Clayton Mosher , Travis Pratt , and J. M. Pickerill . 2007 . Results of the Monitorting of WSP Traffic Stops for Biased Policing: Analysis of WSP Stop, Citation, Search and Use of Force Data and Preliminary Results of the Use of Observational Studies for Denominator Assessment. Olympia, WA: Report to the Washington State Patrol.

Lundman, Richard . 2003 . “ Driver Race, Ethnicity, and Gender and Citizen Reports of Vehicle Searches by Police and Vehicle Search Hits: Toward a Triangulated Scholarly Understanding. ” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 94:309–49.

Lundman, Richard , and Robert Kaufman . 2003 . “ Driving While Black: Effects of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender on Citizen Self-reports of Traffic Stops and Police Actions. ” Criminology 41:195–220.

Manning, Peter . 1997 . Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mastrofski, Stephen , Jeffrey Snipes , Roger Parks , and Christopher Maxwell . 2000 . “ The Helping Hand of the Law: Police Control of Citizens on Request. ” Criminology 38:307–42.

McMahon, Joyce , Joel Garner , Ronald Davis , and Amanda Kraus . 2002 . How to Correctly Collect and Analyze Racial Profiling Data: Your Reputation Depends on It! Washington, DC: Office of Community Oreinted Policing Services.

Meehan, Albert , and Michael Ponder . 2002 . “ How Roadway Composition Matters in Analyzing Police Data on Racial Profiling. ” Police Quarterly 5:306–33.

Miller, Kirk . 2008 . “ Police Stops, Pretext, and Racial Profiling: Explaining Warning and Ticket Stops Using Citizen Self-reports. ” Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice 6:123–49.

Monkkonen, Eric . 1981 . Police in Urban America, 1860–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moon, Byongook , and Charles Corley . 2007 . “ Driving Across Campus: Assessing the Impact of Drivers’ Race and Gender on Police Traffic Enforcement Actions. ” Journal of Criminal Justice 35:29–37.

Muir, William . 1977 . Police: Streetcorner Politicians. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mustard, David . 2003 . “ Reexamining Criminal Behavior: The Importance of Omitted Variable Bias. ” The Review of Economics and Statistics 85:205–11.

National Research Council. 2004 . Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence. Washington, DC: Committee on Law and Justice.

Novak, Kenneth . 2004 . “ Disparity and Racial Profiling in Traffic Enforcement. ” Police Quarterly 7: 65–96.

Paoline, Eugene , and William Terrill . 2005 . “ The Impact of Police Culture on Traffic Stop Searches: An Analysis of Attitudes and Behavior. ” Policing: An Inernational Journal of Police Strategies and Management 28:455–72.

Parker, Karen , John MacDonald , Geoffrey Alpert , Michael Smith , and Alex Piquero . 2004 . “ A Contextual Study of Racial Profiling: Assessing the Theoretical Rationale for the Study of Racial Profiling at the Local Level. ” American Behavioral Scientist 47:943–62.

Perisco, Nicola , and David Castleman . 2005 . “ Detecting Bias: Using Statistical Evidence to Establish Intentional Discrimination in Racial Profiling Cases. ” University of Chicago Legal Forum 2005(1):217–35.

Perisco, Nicola , and Petra Todd . 2006 . “ Generalising the Hit Rates Test for Racial Bias in Law Enforcement, With an Application to Vehicle Searches in Wichita. ” The Economic Journal 116:F351–67.

Petrocelli, Matthew , Alex Piquero , and Michael Smith . 2003 . “ Conflict Theory and Racial Profiling: An Empirical Analysis of Police Traffic Stop Data. ” Journal of Criminal Justice 31:1–11.

Pickerell, J. Mitchell , Clayton Mosher , and Travis Pratt . 2009 . “ Search and Seizure, Racial Profiling, and Traffic Stops: A Disparate Impact Framework. ” Law and Policy 31:1–30.

Pivilian, Irving , and Scott Briar . 1964 . “ Police Encounters with Juveniles. ” American Journal of Sociology 70:206–14.

Ramirez, Deborah , Jack McDevitt , and Amy Farrell . 2000 . Resource Guide on Racial Profiling Data Collection Systems: Promising Practices and Lessons Learned. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

Reiss, Albert . 1971 . Police and the Public. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

———. 1983 . “The Policing of Organizational Life.” In Control in the Police Organization , edited by Maurice Punch , 78–97. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Richardson, James . 1974 . Urban Police in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ridgeway, Greg . 2006 . “ Assessing the Effect of Race Bias in Post-traffic Stop Outcomes Using Propensity Scores. ” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 22:1–29.

Ridgeway, Greg , and John MacDonald . 2009 . “ Doubly Robust Internal Benchmarking and False Discovery Rates for Detecting Racial Bias in Police Stops. ” Journal of the American Statistical Association 104:661–68.

———. 2010 . “Methods for Assessing Racially Biased Policing.” In Race, Ethnicity, and Policing , edited by Stephen K. Rice and Michael D. White , 180–204. New York: New York University Press.

Riksheim, Eric , and Steven Chermak . 1993 . “ Causes of Police Behavior. ” Journal of Criminal Justice 21:353–82.

Roh, Sunghoon , and Matthew Robinson . 2009 . “ A Geographic Approach to Racial Profiling. ” Police Quarterly 12:137–69.

Rojek, Jeff , Richard Rosenfeld , and Scott Decker . 2004 . “ The Influence of Driver’s Race on Traffic Stops in Missouri. ” Police Quarterly 7:126–47.

———. 2012 . “ Policing Race: The Racial Stratification of Searches in Police Traffic Stops. ” Criminology 50:993–1024.

Rosenbaum, Dennis , Amie Schuck , and Gary Cordner . 2011 . The National Police Research Platform: The Life Course of New Officers. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.

Rosich, Katherine . 2007 . Race, Ethnicity, and the Criminal Justice System. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association.

Scalia, John . 2001 . “ The Impact of Changes in Federal Law and Policy on the Sentencing of and Time Served in Prison by Drug Defendents Convicted in U.S. District Courts. ” Federal Sentencing Reporter 14:152–58.

Schafer, Joseph , David Carter , and Andra Katz-Bannister . 2004 . “ Studying Traffic Stop Encounters. ” Journal of Criminal Justice 32:159–70.

Schafer, Joseph , David Carter , Andra Katz-Bannister , and William Wells . 2006 . “ Decision Making in Traffic Stop Encounters: A Multivariate Analysis of Police Behavior. ” Police Quarterly 9:184–209.

Sherman, Lawrence . 1980 . “ Causes of Police Behavior: The Current State of Quantitative Research. ” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 17:69–100.

———. 1998 . Evidence-based Policing: Ideas in American Policing . Washington, DC: Police Foundation.

Skolnick, Jerome . 1966 . Justice Without Trial . Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.

Smith, Douglas , and Christy Visher . 1981 . “ Street-level Justice: Situational Determinants of Police Arrest Decisions. ” Social Problems 29:167–77.

Smith, Douglas , Christy Visher , and Laura Davidson . 1984 . “ Equity and Discretionary Justice: The Influence of Race on Police Arrest Decisions. ” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 75:234–49.

Smith, Michael , and Geoffrey Alpert . 2002 . “ Searching for Discretion: Courts, Social Science, and the Adjudication of Racial Profiling Claims. ” Justice Quarterly 19:673–703.

———. 2007 . “ Explaining Police Bias: A Theory of Social Conditioning and Illusory Correlation. ” Criminal Justice and Behavior 34:1262–83.

Smith, Michael , and Matthew Petrocelli . 2001 . “ Racial Profiling? A Multivariate Analysis of Police Ttraffic Stop Data. ” Police Quarterly 4:4–27.

Smith, William , Donald Tomaskovic-Devey , Matthew Zingraff , Marcinda Mason , Patricia Warren , and Cynthia Wright . 2003 . The North Carolina Highway Traffic Study: Final Report to the National Institute of Justice. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.

Sun, Ivan . 2002 . “ Police Officer Attitudes Toward Peers, Supervisors, and Citizens: A Comparison between Field Training Officers and Regular Officers. ” American Journal of Criminal Justice 27:69–83.

Tillyer, Rob , and Robin Engel . 2010 . “ The Impact of Drivers’ Race, Gender, and Age During Traffic Stops: Assessing Interaction Terms and the Social Conditioning Model. ” Crime and Delinquency 20:1–27.

———. 2012 . “ Racial Differences in Speeding Patterns: Exploring the Differential Offending Hypothesis. ” Journal of Criminal Justice 40:285–95.

Tillyer, Rob , Robin Engel , and Jennifer Cherkauskas . 2010 . “ Best Practices in Vehicle Stop Data Collection and Analysis. ” Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management 33:69–92.

Tillyer, Rob , Robin Engel , and John Wooldredge . 2008 . “ The Intersection of Racial Profiling Research and the Law. ” Journal of Criminal Justice 36:138–53.

Tillyer, Rob , Charles Klahm , and Robin Engel . 2012 . “ The Discretion to Search: A Multi-level Examination of Driver Demographics and Officer Characteristics. ” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 28:184–205.

Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald , Marcinda Mason , and Matthew Zingraff . 2004 . “ Looking for the Driving while Black Phenomena: Conceptualizing Racial Bias Processes and Their Associated Distributions. ” Police Quarterly 7:3–29.

Tonry, Michael . 2011 . Punishing Race: A Continuing Dilemma . New York: Oxford University Press.

Tyler, Tom . 2006 . Why People Obey the Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Van Maanen, John . 1974 . “Working the Street: A Developmental View of Police Behavior.” In The Potential for Reform of Criminal Justice , edited by Herbert Jacob , 83–130. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Verniero, Peter , and Paul Zoubek . 1999 . Interim Report of the State Police Review Team Regarding Allegations of Racial Profiling. Trenton, NJ: Office of the Attorney General.

Walker, Samuel . 2001 . “ Searching for the Denominator: Problems with Police Traffic Stop Data and an Early Warning System Solution. ” Justice Research and Policy 3:63–95.

———. 2003 . “ The New Paradigm of Police Accountability: The U.S. Justice Department ‘Pattern or Practice’ Suits in Context. ” St. Louis University Public Law Review 22:3–52.

Warren, Patricia , and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey . 2009 . “ Racial Profiling and Searches: Did the Politics of Racial Profiling Change Police Behavior? ” Criminology and Public Policy 8:343–69.

Warren, Patricia , Donald Tomaskovic-Devey , William Smith , Matthew Zingraff , and Marcinda Mason . 2006 . “ Driving While Black: Biased Processes and Racial Disparity in Police Stops. ” Criminology 44:709–38.

Weisburd, David , and Peter Neyroud . 2011 . Police Science: Toward a New Paradigm. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Kennedy School Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management.

Weitzer, Ronald , and Steven Tuch . 2004 . “ Race and Perceptions of Police Misconduct. ” Social Problems 51:305–25.

———. 2005 . “ Determinants of Public Satisfaction with the Police. ” Police Quarterly 8:279–97.

Westley, William . 1953 . “ Violence and the Police. ” American Journal of Sociology 59:34–41.

———. 1970 . Violence and the Police. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

White, Michael . 2010 . “ Jim Longstreet, Mike Marshall, and the Lost Art of Policing Skid Row. ” Criminology and Public Policy 9:883–96.

Williams, Hubert , and Patrick Murphy . 1990 . The Evolving Strategy of Police: A Minority View. Cambridge, MA: Kennedy School of Government, Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management.

Wilson, James Q.   1968 . Varieties of Police Behavior: The Management of Law and Order in Eight Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Withrow, Brian . 2004 . “ A Comparative Analysis of Commonly Used Benchmarks in Racial Profiling: A Research Note. ” Justice Research and Policy 6:71–92.

Worden, Robert . 1990 . “ A Badge and a Baccalaureate: Policies, Hypotheses, and Further Evidence. ” Justice Quarterly 7:565–92.

———. 1989 . “ Situational and Attitudinal Explanations of Police Behavior: A Theoretical Reappraisal and Empirical Assessment. ” Law and Society Review 23:667–711.

Zingraff, Matthew T. , H. Marcinda Mason , William R. Smith , Donald Tomaskovic-Devey , Patricia Warren , Harvey L. McMurray , and C. Robert Fenlon . 2000 . Evaluating North Carolina Highway Patrol Data: Citations, Warnings, and Searches in 1998. Raleigh, NC: Report submitted to North Carolina Department of Crime Control and Public Safety and North Carolina Highway Patrol.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Racial Profiling: Definition

“Racial Profiling” refers to the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual’s race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. Criminal profiling, generally, as practiced by police, is the reliance on a group of characteristics they believe to be associated with crime. Examples of racial profiling are the use of race to determine which drivers to stop for minor traffic violations (commonly referred to as “driving while black or brown”), or the use of race to determine which pedestrians to search for illegal contraband.

Another example of racial profiling is the targeting, ongoing since the September 11th attacks, of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians for detention on minor immigrant violations in the absence of any connection to the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.

Law enforcement agent includes a person acting in a policing capacity for public or private purposes. This includes security guards at department stores, airport security agents, police officers, or, more recently, airline pilots who have ordered passengers to disembark from flights, because the passengers’ ethnicity aroused the pilots’ suspicions. Members of each of these occupations have been accused of racial profiling.

Racial profiling does not refer to the act of a law enforcement agent pursuing a suspect in which the specific description of the suspect includes race or ethnicity in combination with other identifying factors.

Defining racial profiling as relying “solely” on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion can be problematic. This definition found in some state racial profiling laws is unacceptable, because it fails to include when police act on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion in combination with an alleged violation of all law. Under the “solely” definition, an officer who targeted Latino drivers who were speeding would not be racial profiling because the drivers were not stopped “solely” because of their race but also because they were speeding. This would eliminate the vast majority of racial profiling now occurring.

Any definition of racial profiling must include, in addition to racially or ethnically discriminatory acts, discriminatory omissions on the part of law enforcement as well. For example, during the eras of lynching in the South in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s, southern sheriffs sat idly by while racists like the Ku Klux Klan terrorized African Americans. At times, the sheriffs would even release black suspects to the lynch mobs. A recent example would be the complaint by an African American man in Maryland, who after moving into a white community, was attacked and subjected to property damage. Local police failed to respond to his repeated complaints until they arrested him for shooting his gun into the air, trying to disperse a hostile mob outside his home.

Racial Profiling May Be Hazardous To Your Health

Many racial profiling victims walk away with traffic tickets, but too often for others the outcome of racial profiling is death.

Pennsylvania (Brentwood) – On October 12, 1995, Jonny Gammage, a 31 year-old African American male, was killed after being pulled over while driving the Jaguar of his cousin, Pittsburgh Steelers football player Ray Seals, in a predominately white community. Although police claimed that Gammage initiated the struggle, a tow truck driver said he saw one officer start the fight and the others join in kicking, hitting and clubbing Gammage while he lay on the pavement. Three officers were tried for involuntary manslaughter: John Vojtas was acquitted; Lt. Milton Mulholland and Michael Albert had their charges dismissed after two mistrials. Gammage’s family settled a wrongful death civil rights lawsuit against the five officers involved and their police departments for $1.5 million.

New York (Bronx-New York City) – On February 4, 1999, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 22 year-old immigrant from New Guinea, West Africa, was shot and killed in the narrow vestibule of the apartment building where he lived. Four white officers, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy fired 41 bullets, hitting Diallo 19 times. All four were members of the New York City Police Department’s Street Crimes Unit, which, under the slogan, “We Own the Night,” used aggressive “stop and frisk” tactics against African Americans at a rate double that group’s population percentage. A report on the unit by the state attorney general found that blacks were stopped at a rate 10 times that of whites, and that 35 percent of those stops lacked reasonable suspicion to detain or had reports insufficiently filled out to make a determination. Thousands attended Diallo’s funeral. Demonstrations were held almost daily, along with the arrests of over 1,200 people in planned civil disobedience. In a trial that was moved out of the community where Diallo lived and to Albany in upstate New York, the four officers who killed Diallo were acquitted of all charges.

Ohio (Cincinnati) – On April 7, 2001, in the early morning hours, Timothy Thomas, a 19 year-old African-American, was shot to death by police officer John Roach. Thomas had 14 outstanding misdemeanor warrants, mostly traffic violations, including failure to wear a seat belt. According to a city councilman, he was running away, holding up his baggy pants, and scaled a fence, landing in a driveway where Roach was approaching and shot Thomas. He became the fifth black male in the city to die at the hands of police in a five-month period and the fifteenth since 1995. Two nights of protests left broken windows at City Hall and fires around the city. Witnesses reported that following Thomas’ funeral, six city SWAT team officers shot pellet-filled bags into a peaceful crowd. Two people hit by the pellets filed lawsuits. Under community and city council pressure, both the public safety director and city manager resigned. Officer Roach was indicted on charges of negligent homicide, and obstructing official business, resulting from differences in his version of events.

Roach was acquitted in a bench trial characterized by the judge’s (a former prosecutor) open admiration for Roach, and blaming Timothy Thomas for “making” Roach kill him.

A community coalition, the Cincinnati Black United Front and the ACLU of Ohio filed suit against the city and the Fraternal Order of Police, citing a pattern and practice of discrimination by police, including issuing the type of traffic citations Thomas received to African Americans at twice their population percentage. In April 2002 the case was settled, under terms including the establishment of a civilian complaint review board and the activation of the reporting of collected traffic stop data that had been enacted by city ordinance in 2001. The Department of Justice also intervened and settled with the city, including revision and review of use of force policy.

It is significant to note that research confirms the existence of bias in decisions to shoot. A series of University of California/University of Chicago studies recreated the experience of a police officer confronted with a potentially dangerous suspect, and found that:

• participants fired on an armed target more quickly when the target was African American than when White, and decided not to shoot an unarmed target more quickly when the target was White than when African American;
• participants failed to shoot an armed target more often when that target was White than when the target was African American. If the target was unarmed, participants mistakenly shot the target more often when African American than when White;
• shooting bias was greater among participants who held a strong cultural stereotype of African Americans as aggressive, violent and dangerous, and among participants who reported more contact with African Americans. shooting bias was greater among participants who held a strong cultural stereotype of African Americans as aggressive, violent and dangerous, and among participants who reported more contact with African Americans 1 .

The stories above and hundreds of others present a compelling argument that not only does racial profiling exists, but it is widespread, and has had a destructive effect on the lives of communities of color, and attitudes toward police.

Asian Racial Profiling

Asians, who, according to the U.S. census, number 10 million, or 4 percent of the population, have been victims of racial profiling as well. Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese American was targeted and suspected of espionage on the basis of his race. Memos by high-ranking FBI and Department of Energy officials acknowledged that Lee was singled out because he was Chinese, and eight similarly situated non-Chinese were not prosecuted. 2

In Seattle, Washington in July 2001 a group of 14 Asian American youth were stopped by police for jaywalking, claiming that they were kept against the wall for about an hour. The Seattle Times reported that one officer told them he had visited their country while in the army, and asked them repeatedly whether they spoke English. The paper also reported that U.S. Representative David Wu (D-Oregon) was detained entering the headquarters of the Department of Energy, and repeatedly.

In 2001, the Asian Freedom Project of Wisconsin issued a report that found the racial profiling of Hmong communities there, and included the testimony of adults, as well as boys and girls.

The Garden Grove (CA) Police Department settled a “gang” database racial profiling lawsuit by a group of young Asian Americans who said their civil rights were violated when officers photographed them as suspected gang members based merely on their ethnicity and clothing.

Indian Racial Profiling

Indigenous people ( Native Americans) call it “DWI,” with a new twist: “Driving While Indian.” According to the National American Indian Housing Council, there are 2.4 million Indians (including Eskimos and Aleuts) in the U.S. Indians complain about stops and searches by local police and sheriffs on roads leading to and from reservations.

In South Dakota , widespread reports of racial profiling led to hearings before the state legislature, where Indians testified about their being stopped and searched not only based on race but also on religious articles hanging from rearview mirrors, and regional license plates that identified them as living on reservations.

In June 2002 scores of Indians in the state’s Bennett County complained to Department of Justice attorneys, alleging racial profiling at the hands of sheriffs there, including vehicular stops in the absence of reasonable suspicion, the administration of breathalyzer tests without reasonable suspicion, warrantless searches of homes and vehicles, and demanding to see drivers licenses and vehicle registrations while inside bars.

Walking While Black and Brown

Although “Driving While Black/Brown” traffic stops and searches are the form of racial profiling that has received the most media attention, profiling takes place off the roadways as well. Black and Latino pedestrians are regularly stopped and frisked without reasonable cause.

In New York City , the December 1999 report of the New York City Police Departments pedestrian “stop and frisk” practices by the state attorney general provided glaring evidence of racial profiling in the nation’s largest city. Blacks comprise 25.6 percent of the City’s population, yet 50.6 percent of all persons “stopped” during the period were black. Hispanics comprise 23.7 percent of the City’s population yet, 33.0 percent of all “stops” were of Hispanics. By contrast, whites are 43.4 percent of the City’s population, but accounted for only 12.9 percent of all stops. Blacks comprise 62.7 percent of all persons “stopped” by the NYPD’s Street Crime Unit (“SCU”).

In precincts in which blacks and Hispanics each represented less than 10 percent of the total population, individuals identified as belonging to these racial groups nevertheless accounted for more than half of the total “stops” during the covered period. Blacks accounted for 30 percent of all persons “stopped” in these precincts; Hispanics accounted for 23.4 percent of all persons “stopped.”

Finally, precincts where minorities constitute the majority of the overall population tended to see more “stop & frisk” activity than precincts where whites constitute a majority of the population: Of the ten precincts showing the highest rate of “stop and frisk” activity (measured by “stops” per 1,000 residents), in only one (the 10 th Precinct) was the majority of the population white. In seven other precincts, blacks and Hispanics constituted the majority of the population. The remaining two precincts were business districts in Manhattan and Brooklyn in which the daytime racial breakdown of persons within the precinct is unknown.

In roughly half of the police precincts in New York City, the majority of the population living in the precinct is white. However, of these 36 majority-white precincts, only 13 were in the top half of precincts showing most “stops” during the period.

“Gang” Database Racial Profiling

In Orange County California , a database containing the names and photographs of reputed gang members appeared to racially profile. 3 Latinos, Asians and African Americans were more than 90 percent of the 20,221 men and women in the Gang Reporting Evaluation and Tracking system, but made up less than half of Orange County’s population. The disparity attracted the notice of the California Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as well as the ACLU. We asked the county district attorney’s office to establish a civilian oversight board to monitor what we saw as problems with the list.

“Bicycling While Black and Brown”

Youth of color have been victims of racially-motivated bicycling stops, ” In April, 2001, the ACLU joined a suit against Eastpointe, Michigan , representing 21 young African-American men who were stopped by the police while riding their bikes there. The ACLU argued that the bicyclists were stopped in this predominantly white suburb of Detroit because of their race and not because they were doing anything wrong. In a 1996 memorandum to the Eastpointe City Manager, the former police chief stated that he instructed his officers to investigate any black youths riding through Eastpointe subdivisions. Police searched many of young men and, in some cases, seized and later sold their bicycles. Police logs and reports in Eastpointe have identified over 100 incidents between 1995 and 1998 in which African-American youth were detained.

“Bitten While Black and Brown”

A throwback to the grainy ‘60’s black and white television news footage of vicious police dogs attacking peaceful black civil rights protesters is the continued discriminatory use of canine units by police. These dogs, lethal weapons capable of biting at 2000 pounds pressure per square inch, and their handlers have been implicated in a vicious form of racial profiling that has led to legal action:

California (Los Angeles)- The ACLU of Southern California compiled reports on the hundreds of mostly blacks and Latinos who were bitten by Los Angeles Police Department dogs from 1990-1992, charging that the dogs trained to “attack and maul,” were routinely sent out in non-violent situations. In 1997, California state highway patrol canine units stopped almost 34,000 vehicles. Only 2 percent were carrying drugs.

Maryland (Prince Georges County) – The Washington Post reported that in May 2001 federal prosecutors charged a county police officer with releasing her police dog on an unarmed Mexican immigrant as part of a pattern of using and threatening the use of the dog on people of color. Despite being the subject of four lawsuits, twice being guilty of making false statements to a supervisor, and five prior instances of releasing the dog on suspects who weren’t resisting, and being flagged by a departmental “early warning” system, the officer remained undisciplined in any substantive way. In 1999 the Post reported that thirteen police dog excessive force suits had been filed in Prince Georges circuit and federal courts, in addition to five others that ended in judgement for plaintiffs or settlement. Of the total, ten alleged repeated bites of suspects once under police control, or while cuffed or on the ground.

South Dakota (Wagner)- While not involving the use of physical canine force, the issue reached a new low when school officials and police led a large German shepherd drug dog through classrooms in suspicionless drug searches of Yankton Sioux K-12 students, some as young as six years old. In July 2002, the ACLU filed suit in federal court.

Washington (Seattle) -In 1992 the ACLU alleged that police dog handlers used excessive force on suspects. Dogs were trained to attack and bite suspects regardless of their actions, even against alleged shoplifters, gasoline siphoners and jaywalkers. They also reported that in that year, 40 percent of police dog attacks were against African Americans, and that 91 people had received police dog bite injuries requiring hospitalization.

The following states appear to require independent reasonable suspicion for dog searches: Alaska, 4 Illinois, 5 Minnesota, 6 New Hampshire, New York, 8 Pennsylvania, 9 and Washington. 10

“Shopping While Black and Brown”

The targeting of shoppers/business patrons of color for suspicion of shoplifting by private security and other employees has disproportionately affected both working and prominent African-American women. TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey said she was refused buzz-in entry to a store even after seeing white women admitted and making a second attempt. After calling from a pay phone and being assured the store was in fact open, a third try failed as well (New York City) . U.S, Congresswoman Maxine Waters said she was followed around a store and required to show her key at a hotel, unlike whites who entered before her ( New York City) . Professional basketball player and Olympic medalist Sheryl Swoopes was kept waiting to be seated for almost an hour at a restaurant, while whites who arrived after her were seated before her (Houston, Texas) .

Pauline Hampton and her niece, both African-Americans, were shopping at the Dillard Department Store in Overland Park, Kansas , a suburb of Kansas City, with their children. After making several purchases, they went to the cosmetics counter to redeem a coupon. A white security guard accused Hampton of shoplifting, took her shopping bag, and, without consent, searched it, emptying the bag onto the counter. After finding the receipt for the items, he shoved the goods and the empty bag back to her. When she complained about his actions, the guard ordered them to leave, and threatened to call the police and have them forcibly removed. Hampton eventually called her husband to the scene and the situation escalated. They sued, and were awarded a $1.2 million judgement; the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Dillard’s appeal.

The store chain, based in Arkansas has also faced dozens of racial profiling lawsuits, claiming harassment and false arrest, in other states including Arkansas, Iowa, and Texas . Evidence produced in one case showed that although 16 percent of its shoppers were African American, 87 percent of the false arrest claims were made by them. In Texas, Dillard settled and paid money to the family of an African American customer who died at a store after being beaten and hog-tied while being detained, and has also settled discrimination suits by employees in Kansas and Missouri.

Other companies sued for racial profiling include Eddie Bauer, Avis Rent A Car, Denny’s Restaurant, The Children’s Place, and Holiday Spa.

Worksite Racial Profiling

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has had a history of disproportionately targeting ethnic groups of color for undocumented labor violations. Like all law enforcement, INS agents must have sufficient evidence of wrong doing to establish probable cause or reasonable suspicion to arrest or detain. They may not carry out their duties in a racially or ethnically discriminatory manner. While ethnicity or nationality are obviously critical elements in immigration violations by themselves, without additional facts there is insufficient basis for law enforcement action.

The New York Times reviewed files of INS raids released as part of the settlement of a garment workers union selective enforcement suit against the agency in New York City. The settlement included a summary that Latinos were 96 percent of the 2,907 people arrested in the 187 worksite raids carried out by the INS in the district, fat greater than their representation in the city’s legal or illegal population. This occurred even where the INS acknowledged that half the workers were not Latino but Asian, including undocumented immigrants.

And while some raids were based on informant information, 80 percent were initiated by agents who cited as primary evidence subjects’ appearance or language without evidence of wrongdoing. Included were skin color, speaking Spanish or English with a Spanish accent, appearing to be of South or Central American descent and wearing clothing “not typical of North Americans.” Such characterizations in major American cities are common to born and naturalized citizens alike.

Undocumented workers were discovered and arrested in all but a few of the reviewed raids, but nearly everyone arrested was Latino.

Suits have also been filed in Arkansas, California, Louisiana, and Ohio claiming racial profiling by the INS. A federal court in Ohio found violations of the rights of Latinos by that states highway patrol’s practice of stopping Latino drivers to question them about their immigration status, including officers even confiscated the green cards of legal migrant workers claiming they were counterfeit. In California, federal courts have found Fourth Amendment violations of Latinos in the stopping of Latinos on the basis of appearance and foreign sounding names.

The Supreme Court has held that INS agents working near the Mexican border may use Spanish ethnicity as a basis for detaining a person, but that it may not be the only basis.

A related issue is the targeting by police, first reported by the ACLU in Florida, of Latinos waiting on public sidewalks for labor employers to appear and select them for work, under the offense of being “visual clutter.”

Related Issues

• Racial Justice
• Mass Incarceration
• Smart Justice
• Racial Profiling
• Race and Criminal Justice

Stay Informed

Every month, you'll receive regular roundups of the most important civil rights and civil liberties developments. Remember: a well-informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.

By completing this form, I agree to receive occasional emails per the terms of the ACLU’s privacy statement.

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

It’s on Facebook, and it’s complicated

How far has COVID set back students?

What do anti-Jewish hate, anti-Muslim hate have in common?

Protesters take a knee in front of New York City police officers during a solidarity rally for George Floyd, June 4, 2020.

AP Photo/Frank Franklin II

Solving racial disparities in policing

Colleen Walsh

Harvard Staff Writer

Experts say approach must be comprehensive as roots are embedded in culture

“ Unequal ” is a multipart series highlighting the work of Harvard faculty, staff, students, alumni, and researchers on issues of race and inequality across the U.S. The first part explores the experience of people of color with the criminal justice legal system in America.

It seems there’s no end to them. They are the recent videos and reports of Black and brown people beaten or killed by law enforcement officers, and they have fueled a national outcry over the disproportionate use of excessive, and often lethal, force against people of color, and galvanized demands for police reform.

This is not the first time in recent decades that high-profile police violence — from the 1991 beating of Rodney King to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in 2014 — ignited calls for change. But this time appears different. The police killings of Breonna Taylor in March, George Floyd in May, and a string of others triggered historic, widespread marches and rallies across the nation, from small towns to major cities, drawing protesters of unprecedented diversity in race, gender, and age.

According to historians and other scholars, the problem is embedded in the story of the nation and its culture. Rooted in slavery, racial disparities in policing and police violence, they say, are sustained by systemic exclusion and discrimination, and fueled by implicit and explicit bias. Any solution clearly will require myriad new approaches to law enforcement, courts, and community involvement, and comprehensive social change driven from the bottom up and the top down.

While police reform has become a major focus, the current moment of national reckoning has widened the lens on systemic racism for many Americans. The range of issues, though less familiar to some, is well known to scholars and activists. Across Harvard, for instance, faculty members have long explored the ways inequality permeates every aspect of American life. Their research and scholarship sits at the heart of a new Gazette series starting today aimed at finding ways forward in the areas of democracy; wealth and opportunity; environment and health; and education. It begins with this first on policing.

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad traces the history of policing in America to “slave patrols” in the antebellum South, in which white citizens were expected to help supervise the movements of enslaved Black people.

Photo by Martha Stewart

The history of racialized policing

Like many scholars, Khalil Gibran Muhammad , professor of history, race, and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School , traces the history of policing in America to “slave patrols” in the antebellum South, in which white citizens were expected to help supervise the movements of enslaved Black people. This legacy, he believes, can still be seen in policing today. “The surveillance, the deputization essentially of all white men to be police officers or, in this case, slave patrollers, and then to dispense corporal punishment on the scene are all baked in from the very beginning,” he  told NPR  last year.

Slave patrols, and the slave codes they enforced, ended after the Civil War and the passage of the 13th amendment, which formally ended slavery “except as a punishment for crime.” But Muhammad notes that former Confederate states quickly used that exception to justify new restrictions. Known as the Black codes, the various rules limited the kinds of jobs African Americans could hold, their rights to buy and own property, and even their movements.

“The genius of the former Confederate states was to say, ‘Oh, well, if all we need to do is make them criminals and they can be put back in slavery, well, then that’s what we’ll do.’ And that’s exactly what the Black codes set out to do. The Black codes, for all intents and purposes, criminalized every form of African American freedom and mobility, political power, economic power, except the one thing it didn’t criminalize was the right to work for a white man on a white man’s terms.” In particular, he said the Ku Klux Klan “took about the business of terrorizing, policing, surveilling, and controlling Black people. … The Klan totally dominates the machinery of justice in the South.”

When, during what became known as the Great Migration, millions of African Americans fled the still largely agrarian South for opportunities in the thriving manufacturing centers of the North, they discovered that metropolitan police departments tended to enforce the law along racial and ethnic lines, with newcomers overseen by those who came before. “There was an early emphasis on people whose status was just a tiny notch better than the folks whom they were focused on policing,” Muhammad said. “And so the Anglo-Saxons are policing the Irish or the Germans are policing the Irish. The Irish are policing the Poles.” And then arrived a wave of Black Southerners looking for a better life.

In his groundbreaking work, “ The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America ,” Muhammad argues that an essential turning point came in the early 1900s amid efforts to professionalize police forces across the nation, in part by using crime statistics to guide law enforcement efforts. For the first time, Americans with European roots were grouped into one broad category, white, and set apart from the other category, Black.

Citing Muhammad’s research, Harvard historian Jill Lepore  has summarized the consequences this way : “Police patrolled Black neighborhoods and arrested Black people disproportionately; prosecutors indicted Black people disproportionately; juries found Black people guilty disproportionately; judges gave Black people disproportionately long sentences; and, then, after all this, social scientists, observing the number of Black people in jail, decided that, as a matter of biology, Black people were disproportionately inclined to criminality.”

“History shows that crime data was never objective in any meaningful sense,” Muhammad wrote. Instead, crime statistics were “weaponized” to justify racial profiling, police brutality, and ever more policing of Black people.

This phenomenon, he believes, has continued well into this century and is exemplified by William J. Bratton, one of the most famous police leaders in recent America history. Known as “America’s Top Cop,” Bratton led police departments in his native Boston, Los Angeles, and twice in New York, finally retiring in 2016.

Bratton rejected notions that crime was a result of social and economic forces, such as poverty, unemployment, police practices, and racism. Instead, he said in a 2017 speech, “It is about behavior.” Through most of his career, he was a proponent of statistically-based “predictive” policing — essentially placing forces in areas where crime numbers were highest, focused on the groups found there.

Bratton argued that the technology eliminated the problem of prejudice in policing, without ever questioning potential bias in the data or algorithms themselves — a significant issue given the fact that Black Americans are arrested and convicted of crimes at disproportionately higher rates than whites. This approach has led to widely discredited practices such as racial profiling and “stop-and-frisk.” And, Muhammad notes, “There is no research consensus on whether or how much violence dropped in cities due to policing.”

Gathering numbers

In 2015 The Washington Post began tracking every fatal shooting by an on-duty officer, using news stories, social media posts, and police reports in the wake of the fatal police shooting of Brown, a Black teenager in Ferguson, Mo. According to the newspaper, Black Americans are killed by police at twice the rate of white Americans, and Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.

Such efforts have proved useful for researchers such as economist Rajiv Sethi .

A Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard  Radcliffe Institute , Sethi is investigating the use of lethal force by law enforcement officers, a difficult task given that data from such encounters is largely unavailable from police departments. Instead, Sethi and his team of researchers have turned to information collected by websites and news organizations including The Washington Post and The Guardian, merged with data from other sources such as the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Census, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A Joy Foundation Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Rajiv Sethi is investigating the use of lethal force by law enforcement officers,

Courtesy photo

They have found that exposure to deadly force is highest in the Mountain West and Pacific regions relative to the mid-Atlantic and northeastern states, and that racial disparities in relation to deadly force are even greater than the national numbers imply. “In the country as a whole, you’re about two to three times more likely to face deadly force if you’re Black than if you are white” said Sethi. “But if you look at individual cities separately, disparities in exposure are much higher.”

Examining the characteristics associated with police departments that experience high numbers of lethal encounters is one way to better understand and address racial disparities in policing and the use of violence, Sethi said, but it’s a massive undertaking given the decentralized nature of policing in America. There are roughly 18,000 police departments in the country, and more than 3,000 sheriff’s offices, each with its own approaches to training and selection.

“They behave in very different ways, and what we’re finding in our current research is that they are very different in the degree to which they use deadly force,” said Sethi. To make real change, “You really need to focus on the agency level where organizational culture lies, where selection and training protocols have an effect, and where leadership can make a difference.”

Sethi pointed to the example of Camden, N.J., which disbanded and replaced its police force in 2013, initially in response to a budget crisis, but eventually resulting in an effort to fundamentally change the way the police engaged with the community. While there have been improvements, including greater witness cooperation, lower crime, and fewer abuse complaints, the Camden case doesn’t fit any particular narrative, said Sethi, noting that the number of officers actually increased as part of the reform. While the city is still faced with its share of problems, Sethi called its efforts to rethink policing “important models from which we can learn.”

Fighting vs. preventing crime

For many analysts, the real problem with policing in America is the fact that there is simply too much of it. “We’ve seen since the mid-1970s a dramatic increase in expenditures that are associated with expanding the criminal legal system, including personnel and the tasks we ask police to do,” said Sandra Susan Smith , Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice at HKS, and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute. “And at the same time we see dramatic declines in resources devoted to social welfare programs.”

“You can have all the armored personnel carriers you want in Ferguson, but public safety is more likely to come from redressing environmental pollution, poor education, and unfair work,” said Brandon Terry, assistant professor of African and African American Studies and social studies.

Kris Snibble/Harvard file photo

Smith’s comment highlights a key argument embraced by many activists and experts calling for dramatic police reform: diverting resources from the police to better support community services including health care, housing, and education, and stronger economic and job opportunities. They argue that broader support for such measures will decrease the need for policing, and in turn reduce violent confrontations, particularly in over-policed, economically disadvantaged communities, and communities of color.

For Brandon Terry , that tension took the form of an ice container during his Baltimore high school chemistry final. The frozen cubes were placed in the middle of the classroom to help keep the students cool as a heat wave sent temperatures soaring. “That was their solution to the building’s lack of air conditioning,” said Terry, a Harvard assistant professor of African and African American Studies and social studies. “Just grab an ice cube.”

Terry’s story is the kind many researchers cite to show the negative impact of underinvesting in children who will make up the future population, and instead devoting resources toward policing tactics that embrace armored vehicles, automatic weapons, and spy planes. Terry’s is also the kind of tale promoted by activists eager to defund the police, a movement begun in the late 1960s that has again gained momentum as the death toll from violent encounters mounts. A scholar of Martin Luther King Jr., Terry said the Civil Rights leader’s views on the Vietnam War are echoed in the calls of activists today who are pressing to redistribute police resources.

“King thought that the idea of spending many orders of magnitude more for an unjust war than we did for the abolition of poverty and the abolition of ghettoization was a moral travesty, and it reflected a kind of sickness at the core of our society,” said Terry. “And part of what the defund model is based upon is a similar moral criticism, that these budgets reflect priorities that we have, and our priorities are broken.”

Terry also thinks the policing debate needs to be expanded to embrace a fuller understanding of what it means for people to feel truly safe in their communities. He highlights the work of sociologist Chris Muller and Harvard’s Robert Sampson, who have studied racial disparities in exposures to lead and the connections between a child’s early exposure to the toxic metal and antisocial behavior. Various studies have shown that lead exposure in children can contribute to cognitive impairment and behavioral problems, including heightened aggression.

“You can have all the armored personnel carriers you want in Ferguson,” said Terry, “but public safety is more likely to come from redressing environmental pollution, poor education, and unfair work.”

Policing and criminal justice system

Alexandra Natapoff , Lee S. Kreindler Professor of Law, sees policing as inexorably linked to the country’s criminal justice system and its long ties to racism.

“Policing does not stand alone or apart from how we charge people with crimes, or how we convict them, or how we treat them once they’ve been convicted,” she said. “That entire bundle of official practices is a central part of how we govern, and in particular, how we have historically governed Black people and other people of color, and economically and socially disadvantaged populations.”

Unpacking such a complicated issue requires voices from a variety of different backgrounds, experiences, and fields of expertise who can shine light on the problem and possible solutions, said Natapoff, who co-founded a new lecture series with HLS Professor Andrew Crespo titled “ Policing in America .”

In recent weeks the pair have hosted Zoom discussions on topics ranging from qualified immunity to the Black Lives Matter movement to police unions to the broad contours of the American penal system. The series reflects the important work being done around the country, said Natapoff, and offers people the chance to further “engage in dialogue over these over these rich, complicated, controversial issues around race and policing, and governance and democracy.”

Courts and mass incarceration

Much of Natapoff’s recent work emphasizes the hidden dangers of the nation’s misdemeanor system. In her book “ Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal ,” Natapoff shows how the practice of stopping, arresting, and charging people with low-level offenses often sends them down a devastating path.

“This is how most people encounter the criminal apparatus, and it’s the first step of mass incarceration, the initial net that sweeps people of color disproportionately into the criminal system,” said Natapoff. “It is also the locus that overexposes Black people to police violence. The implications of this enormous net of police and prosecutorial authority around minor conduct is central to understanding many of the worst dysfunctions of our criminal system.”

One consequence is that Black and brown people are incarcerated at much higher rates than white people. America has approximately 2.3 million people in federal, state, and local prisons and jails, according to a 2020 report from the nonprofit the Prison Policy Initiative. According to a 2018 report from the Sentencing Project, Black men are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated as white men and Hispanic men are 3.1 times as likely.

Reducing mass incarceration requires shrinking the misdemeanor net “along all of its axes” said Natapoff, who supports a range of reforms including training police officers to both confront and arrest people less for low-level offenses, and the policies of forward-thinking prosecutors willing to “charge fewer of those offenses when police do make arrests.”

She praises the efforts of Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins in Massachusetts and George Gascón, the district attorney in Los Angeles County, Calif., who have pledged to stop prosecuting a range of misdemeanor crimes such as resisting arrest, loitering, trespassing, and drug possession. “If cities and towns across the country committed to that kind of reform, that would be a profoundly meaningful change,” said Natapoff, “and it would be a big step toward shrinking our entire criminal apparatus.”

Retired U.S. Judge Nancy Gertner cites the need to reform federal sentencing guidelines, arguing that all too often they have been proven to be biased and to result in packing the nation’s jails and prisons.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard file photo

Sentencing reform

Another contributing factor in mass incarceration is sentencing disparities.

A recent Harvard Law School study found that, as is true nationally, people of color are “drastically overrepresented in Massachusetts state prisons.” But the report also noted that Black and Latinx people were less likely to have their cases resolved through pretrial probation ­— a way to dismiss charges if the accused meet certain conditions — and receive much longer sentences than their white counterparts.

Retired U.S. Judge Nancy Gertner also notes the need to reform federal sentencing guidelines, arguing that all too often they have been proven to be biased and to result in packing the nation’s jails and prisons. She points to the way the 1994 Crime Bill (legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware) ushered in much harsher drug penalties for crack than for powder cocaine. This tied the hands of judges issuing sentences and disproportionately punished people of color in the process. “The disparity in the treatment of crack and cocaine really was backed up by anecdote and stereotype, not by data,” said Gertner, a lecturer at HLS. “There was no data suggesting that crack was infinitely more dangerous than cocaine. It was the young Black predator narrative.”

The First Step Act, a bipartisan prison reform bill aimed at reducing racial disparities in drug sentencing and signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018, is just what its name implies, said Gertner.

“It reduces sentences to the merely inhumane rather than the grotesque. We still throw people in jail more than anybody else. We still resort to imprisonment, rather than thinking of other alternatives. We still resort to punishment rather than other models. None of that has really changed. I don’t deny the significance of somebody getting out of prison a year or two early, but no one should think that that’s reform.”

 Not just bad apples

Reform has long been a goal for federal leaders. Many heralded Obama-era changes aimed at eliminating racial disparities in policing and outlined in the report by The President’s Task Force on 21st Century policing. But HKS’s Smith saw them as largely symbolic. “It’s a nod to reform. But most of the reforms that are implemented in this country tend to be reforms that nibble around the edges and don’t really make much of a difference.”

Efforts such as diversifying police forces and implicit bias training do little to change behaviors and reduce violent conduct against people of color, said Smith, who cites studies suggesting a majority of Americans hold negative biases against Black and brown people, and that unconscious prejudices and stereotypes are difficult to erase.

“Experiments show that you can, in the context of a day, get people to think about race differently, and maybe even behave differently. But if you follow up, say, a week, or two weeks later, those effects are gone. We don’t know how to produce effects that are long-lasting. We invest huge amounts to implement such police reforms, but most often there’s no empirical evidence to support their efficacy.”

Even the early studies around the effectiveness of body cameras suggest the devices do little to change “officers’ patterns of behavior,” said Smith, though she cautions that researchers are still in the early stages of collecting and analyzing the data.

And though police body cameras have caught officers in unjust violence, much of the general public views the problem as anomalous.

“Despite what many people in low-income communities of color think about police officers, the broader society has a lot of respect for police and thinks if you just get rid of the bad apples, everything will be fine,” Smith added. “The problem, of course, is this is not just an issue of bad apples.”

Efforts such as diversifying police forces and implicit bias training do little to change behaviors and reduce violent conduct against people of color, said Sandra Susan Smith, a professor of criminal justice Harvard Kennedy School.

Community-based ways forward

Still Smith sees reason for hope and possible ways forward involving a range of community-based approaches. As part of the effort to explore meaningful change, Smith, along with Christopher Winship , Diker-Tishman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and a member of the senior faculty at HKS, have organized “ Reimagining Community Safety: A Program in Criminal Justice Speaker Series ” to better understand the perspectives of practitioners, policymakers, community leaders, activists, and academics engaged in public safety reform.

Some community-based safety models have yielded important results. Smith singles out the Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets program (known as CAHOOTS ) in Eugene, Ore., which supplements police with a community-based public safety program. When callers dial 911 they are often diverted to teams of workers trained in crisis resolution, mental health, and emergency medicine, who are better equipped to handle non-life-threatening situations. The numbers support her case. In 2017 the program received 25,000 calls, only 250 of which required police assistance. Training similar teams of specialists who don’t carry weapons to handle all traffic stops could go a long way toward ending violent police encounters, she said.

“Imagine you have those kinds of services in play,” said Smith, paired with community-based anti-violence program such as Cure Violence , which aims to stop violence in targeted neighborhoods by using approaches health experts take to control disease, such as identifying and treating individuals and changing social norms. Together, she said, these programs “could make a huge difference.”

At Harvard Law School, students have been  studying how an alternate 911-response team  might function in Boston. “We were trying to move from thinking about a 911-response system as an opportunity to intervene in an acute moment, to thinking about what it would look like to have a system that is trying to help reweave some of the threads of community, a system that is more focused on healing than just on stopping harm” said HLS Professor Rachel Viscomi, who directs the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program and oversaw the research.

The forthcoming report, compiled by two students in the HLS clinic, Billy Roberts and Anna Vande Velde, will offer officials a range of ideas for how to think about community safety that builds on existing efforts in Boston and other cities, said Viscomi.

But Smith, like others, knows community-based interventions are only part of the solution. She applauds the Justice Department’s investigation into the Ferguson Police Department after the shooting of Brown. The 102-page report shed light on the department’s discriminatory policing practices, including the ways police disproportionately targeted Black residents for tickets and fines to help balance the city’s budget. To fix such entrenched problems, state governments need to rethink their spending priorities and tax systems so they can provide cities and towns the financial support they need to remain debt-free, said Smith.

Rethinking the 911-response system to being one that is “more focused on healing than just on stopping harm” is part of the student-led research under the direction of Law School Professor Rachel Viscomi, who heads up the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program.

Jon Chase/Harvard file photo

“Part of the solution has to be a discussion about how government is funded and how a city like Ferguson got to a place where government had so few resources that they resorted to extortion of their residents, in particular residents of color, in order to make ends meet,” she said. “We’ve learned since that Ferguson is hardly the only municipality that has struggled with funding issues and sought to address them through the oppression and repression of their politically, socially, and economically marginalized Black and Latino residents.”

Police contracts, she said, also need to be reexamined. The daughter of a “union man,” Smith said she firmly supports officers’ rights to union representation to secure fair wages, health care, and safe working conditions. But the power unions hold to structure police contracts in ways that protect officers from being disciplined for “illegal and unethical behavior” needs to be challenged, she said.

“I think it’s incredibly important for individuals to be held accountable and for those institutions in which they are embedded to hold them to account. But we routinely find that union contracts buffer individual officers from having to be accountable. We see this at the level of the Supreme Court as well, whose rulings around qualified immunity have protected law enforcement from civil suits. That needs to change.”

Other Harvard experts agree. In an opinion piece in The Boston Globe last June, Tomiko Brown-Nagin , dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at HLS, pointed out the Court’s “expansive interpretation of qualified immunity” and called for reform that would “promote accountability.”

“This nation is devoted to freedom, to combating racial discrimination, and to making government accountable to the people,” wrote Brown-Nagin. “Legislators today, like those who passed landmark Civil Rights legislation more than 50 years ago, must take a stand for equal justice under law. Shielding police misconduct offends our fundamental values and cannot be tolerated.”

Share this article

You might like.

‘Spermworld’ documentary examines motivations of prospective parents, volunteer donors who connect through private group page 

An economist, a policy expert, and a teacher explain why learning losses are worse than many parents realize

Researchers scrutinize various facets of these types of bias, and note sometimes they both reside within the same person.

How old is too old to run?

No such thing, specialist says — but when your body is trying to tell you something, listen

Alcohol is dangerous. So is ‘alcoholic.’

Researcher explains the human toll of language that makes addiction feel worse

Excited about new diet drug? This procedure seems better choice.

Study finds minimally invasive treatment more cost-effective over time, brings greater weight loss

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Racial Profiling — Racial Profiling’s Impact on Community-Police Relations

Racial Profiling's Impact on Community-police Relations

• Categories: Community Racial Profiling

About this sample

Words: 557 |

Published: Mar 25, 2024

Words: 557 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Introduction:, historical background:, underlying causes:, effects on community-police relations:, legal and ethical implications:, mitigating strategies:, conclusion:.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

• Expert in: Sociology Social Issues

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 788 words

2 pages / 960 words

2 pages / 698 words

2 pages / 1131 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Racial Profiling

Racism in the justice system is a deeply rooted issue that has persisted for generations, perpetuating unequal treatment, discrimination, and social injustice. This essay aims to provide an in-depth analysis of the concept of [...]

Racial profiling has long been a contentious issue in society, with detrimental effects on individuals and communities. In this essay, we will explore the historical context of racial profiling, its various forms and examples, [...]

Racial profiling is a controversial and complex issue that has been a topic of debate for many years. This practice involves law enforcement and other authorities targeting individuals for suspicion of a crime based on their [...]

Police brutality is a concerning issue that needs immediate attention due to its impact on individuals and society. This essay will explore the definition and forms of police brutality, the causes of this phenomenon, its [...]

In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, author Michelle Alexander delves into the troublesome topic of social control mechanisms through the lens of race. Alexander, a professor of law at Ohio [...]

I have analyzed the book to dissect the connection between the rising prison population and racism in America. Stevenson examines the U.S. justice system and points out, using facts and testimonies, how justice has eluded [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free