Racial composition and arrest disparities: The mediating role of implicit bias

• In Event: Advancing Racial Threat Theory Conceptually and Empirically

Abstract

Racial threat theory predicts that the percent of Blacks in a population produces formal social control. Various theorists and researchers have explored the factors that might mediate this relationship and negative attitudes, particularly prejudice against Blacks, is one factor that has received at least limited attention. The mixed results from this line of research might be due to the form of prejudice that is measured. Research to date has examined this relationship focusing only on explicit bias, which is now recognized as only one way that bias might manifest in humans and is particularly subject to social desirability in its measurement. The objective of the present research is to examine the mediating impact of prejudice on the relationship between population makeup and formal social control using groundbreaking data on levels of implicit bias against Blacks for geographic areas. For this study, county-level data produced by the Harvard Implicit Association Test are used to examine the impact of population makeup on racial disparities in incarceration for drug arrests.

Authors

• Christopher J. Marier, University of South Florida

• Lorie Fridell, University of South Florida