Driving While Broke: Class Signals and Discretion in Police Searches

• In Event: Organizational Dynamics and Individual Discretion: A Top-Down Assessment of Police Practice and Perception (Sponsored by Division of Policing)

Abstract

There is ongoing debate over the latitude of discretion police officers have when conducting traffic stops and searches. While necessary due to resource limitations, discretion can pertain to subjective characteristics of suspicion formation, such as driver race/ethnicity, which perpetuates disparities in traffic enforcement. Less research has explored other marginalizing characteristics of suspicion formation, such as drivers’ social class. This study draws on over 250,000 stops conducted by the Michigan State Police in 2022 to explore how vehicle values may serve as class signals that influence officers’ discretion, potentially generating disparities in search decisions and outcomes. We found that lower value vehicles were more likely to be searched than higher value vehicles after matching based on when, where, and under what circumstances stops occurred. Vehicle values did not, however, predict the likelihood of contraband recovery. Our findings highlight potential avenues for officer training and for future research analyzing inequalities in policing.

Authors

• Jed Knode, Michigan State University

• Travis Carter, University of South Florida

• Scott Wolfe, Michigan State University