Racial Bias in Police Searches: Using Shifts in Police Manpower to Test for Racial Profiling

• In Event: Race, Law and the New Policing

Abstract

This paper applies a new statistical method for estimating racial profiling among police officers.  We extend the model of using “hit rates” from searches of suspects stopped by the police to test for racial profiling with a quasi-experimental design that exploits the sudden shift in the intensity of police searches caused by the declaration of small geographic areas in New York City as high crime “impact zones.”  Under this sudden change in focus areas are given extra police officers who are encouraged to stop and question suspects more vigorously to reduce criminal behavior.  If the police utility is only focused on reducing crime, then the increase in stops and searches after an area is declared an impact zone should be applied equally to everyone suspected of a crime. We apply the use of doubly robust estimation so that stops and searches before and after an area is declared an impact zone are statistically similar on observables.  We then estimate the changes in hit rates for Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics stopped and searched by the police before and after areas during two major expansions of the impact zone program. 

Authors

• John MacDonald, University of Pennsylvania

• Jeffrey Fagan, Columbia University

• Greg Ridgeway, University of Pennsylvania