Racial Profiling/Biased Policing

Abstract

Media and legal attention to the issue of racial profiling in the United States intensified in the 1990s, with numerous studies from a wide range of jurisdictions revealing evidence of biased policing. This article briefly examines the history of biased policing in the United States, discusses the results of some of the more recent studies as well as studies of biased policing in other countries, and also devotes considerable attention to important theoretical and methodological issues in conducting research on racial profiling. These issues include how race/ethnicity should be coded, how to establish an appropriate denominator/benchmark in racial profiling studies, and what factors in addition to race/ethnicity need to be considered in analyses of bias in citations/arrests/and searches. Although attention to racial profiling waned somewhat after the September 11, 2001, attacks, recent events suggest a renewed interest in this problem.

Deracialization, Dissent, and Terrorism in the FBI’s Most Wanted Program

“…Often drawing heavily on Omi and Winant’s theoretical framework, the body of work on racial attribution and terrorism focuses on racial profiling, the figure of the Muslim terrorist, and the lumping together of Arab, Muslim, Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian people (Bayoumi 2009; Cainkar 2009; Daulatzai 2012; Genova 2012; Mosher 2011; Naber 2008; Rana 2011; Selod 2018; Semati 2010; Silva 2016). Some of this research zeroes in on the never-quite-materialized sense of racialization of the Muslim: Junaid Rana (2016) called this “Muslim racial becoming,” because Muslims are racialized but never quite defined as a race .…”

Barred from employment: More than half of unemployed men in their 30s had a criminal history of arrest

“…The absence of social, religious, and economic institutions in these areas often coincides with the lack of a regular police presence, forcing residents to navigate everyday problems on their own. However, when law enforcement officers are present, they often heavily target black and Hispanic youth and adults for harassment and arrest, which contributes to disproportionately high arrest, conviction, and incarceration rates for members of these groups (18)(19)(20)(21)(22).…”

Social Status and Opioid Drugged Driving

“…Drug-impaired (or drugged) driving has received much attention in public safety and health fields but has been under studied by criminologists during the current opioid drug crisis. While vehicle-based offenses like motor vehicle theft (Piza & Carter, 2018) and, to a lesser extent, traffic-based offenses like street-racing (Worrall & Tibbetts, 2006) or alcohol-impaired driving (Schwartz & Rookey, 2008; Stringer, 2021) are outcomes of interest in criminological studies, traffic provides the situational context to examine the prevalence of racial profiling in traffic stops (Mosher, 2011) and vehicle searches (Persico & Todd, 2008), for example. Indeed, the most common way people experience police-initiated contact is while driving a vehicle in traffic (Harrell & Davis, 2020).…”