Legal Smarts and Police Stops: Measuring Miranda Knowledge in the Context of Aggressive Policing in East New York, Brooklyn

• In Event: Smart Policing and Legal Smarts

Abstract

While there is a substantial body of criminal justice-oriented literature on police-initiated pedestrian stops, the waiving or invocation of Miranda rights in scenarios resulting from aggressive policing tactics remains understudied. This project seeks to understand people’s knowledge of Miranda rights in the context of proactive policing practices. We focus on East New York, Brooklyn because of its high concentration of NYPD’s Stop, Question and Frisk policy (hereafter “SQF”), an aggressive order maintenance policing strategy that utilizes frequent and often contentious police-initiated interactions with citizens. Using a cross-sectional survey (n=250) distributed via Computer Assisted Personnel Interviewing (CAPI) along five intersections that are hotspots for SQFs in East New York, Brooklyn, we assess determinants of Miranda rights knowledge among individuals who are most at risk of being targeted for such practices: young, non-white males. We also compare the accuracy of participants’ Miranda knowledge during SQFs and interrogations at police precincts to examine the influence of custodial context.

Authors

• Marin Kurti, Rutgers University

• Sarah Trocchio, Rutgers University