Police Stop and Frisk and the Impact of Race: A Focal Concerns Theory Approach

Abstract

The findings of this study outline the racial differences in stop and frisk decisions by Illinois officers in consent searches and those based upon reasonable suspicion within the context of the elements of focal concerns theory. The analysis for this study was performed using propensity score matching (PSM) and allowed the researchers to create a quasi-experimental design to examine the race of the citizen and police decision making. According to our analysis of official Illinois law enforcement data, Black citizens, particularly males, were less likely to give their consent to a stop and frisk search. Black male citizens were also more likely to be stopped and searched due to an assessment of reasonable suspicion by the officer. Elements of focal concerns theory were also factors in pedestrian stops under conditions of consent and reasonable suspicion. Citizens judged as blameworthy were more likely to be stopped and frisked under conditions of consent and reasonable suspicion. The effect of a verbal threat and the officer’s prior knowledge about the citizen had even more significant impacts.

Segregation and “Out-of-Placeness”: The Direct Effect of Neighborhood Racial Composition on Police Stops

“…4), lead to officers reacting in different ways to the same behavior, depending on the place where it occurs and on the presumed characteristics of the person engaging in that behavior. That, in the eyes of the police, a key feature of both those characteristics and of the place in which the behavior occurs is race should not be a surprise: canonically, an African-American male dressed in a hoodie and “casing” a store in a primarily white area is a paradigmatic example of a situation the police consider to be disorderly (Capers 2009; Huq 2017; Vito, Higgins, and Vito 2021). In this way, differential policing is precisely a localized, in situ response to racial segregation.…”