The Organizational Structure of Driving While Black: What Do Police Organizational Characteristics Tell Us about Racialized Traffic Enforcement?

• In Event: Organizational Analysis to Explain Racialization and Other Vulnerability in Policing

Abstract

The study examines how administrative characteristics of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) explain traffic stop patterns. Building on a long tradition that highlights the importance of police organizational characteristics for explaining police behavior, the study tests a series of hypotheses intended to advance our understanding of the types of LEAs that are more likely to use traffic stops as a primary tactic in law enforcement and especially crime control. Traffic stops have become a primary mechanism for many American LEAs in their efforts to control crime. There is good reason to expect that agencies that are more likely to use traffic stops to control crime will generate a higher than expected proportion of stops of racial minority motorists because a larger proportion of their traffic stops will be motivated by criminal suspicion rather than traffic law violations. The cognitive, cultural and organizational connection between criminal suspicion and minority status underlies the expected patterns. These expectations are explored using data from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics survey and traffic stop data generated by the Illinois State Traffic Stop Statistics Act to examine how LEA organization is associated with stop patterns.

Author

• Kirk Miller, Northern Illinois University