Road Work: Racial Profiling and Drug Interdiction on the Highway

An Analysis of the New York City Police Department's “Stop-and-Frisk” Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias

“…Recent evidence supports perceptions among minority citizens that police disproportionately stop African-American and Hispanic motorists, and that once stopped, these citizens are more likely to be searched or arrested (Cole 1999;Veneiro and Zoubeck 1999;Harris 1999;Zingraff et al 2000;Gross and Barnes 2002). For example, two surveys with nationwide probability samples, completed in 1999 and in 2002, showed that African-Americans were far more likely than others to report being stopped on the highways by police (Langan, Greenfeld, Smith, Durose, and Levin 2001;Durose, Schmitt, and Langan 2005).…”

An Analysis of the NYPD's Stop-And-Frisk Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias

“…Recent empirical evidence on police stops supports perceptions among minority citizens that police disproportionately stop African American and Hispanic motorists, and that once stopped, these citizens are more likely to be searched or arrested (Cole, 1999, Veneiro and Zoubeck, 1999, Harris, 1999, Zingraff et al, 2000, Gross and Barnes, 2002. For example, two surveys with nationwide probability samples, completed in 1999 and in 2002, showed that African-Americans were far more likely than other Americans to report being stopped on the highways by police (Langan et al, 2001, Durose et al, 2005.…”

“…In this approach, comparisons of "hit rates," or efficiencies in the proportion of stops that yield positive results, serve as evidence of disparate impacts of police stops. This type of analysis was used in several studies, including Ayres (2002a,b) and Gross and Barnes (2002). This approach bypasses the question of who is stopped…”

“…The accompanying theoretical analysis posits a dynamic process that considers both the behaviors of police and citizens of different races, and integrates their decisions in an equilibrium where police calibrate their behavior to the probabilities of detecting illegal behavior, and citizens in different racial groups adjust their propensities to accommodate the likelihood of detection. They concluded that the search for drugs was an efficient allocation of police resources, despite the disparate impacts of these stops on minority citizens (Lamberth, 1997, Ayres, 2002a, Gross and Barnes, 2002. However, this analysis omits several factors that might bias these claims, such as racial differences in the attributes that police consider when deciding which motorists to stop, search or arrest (see, for example, Alpert et al, 2005, Smith, Makarios andAlpert, 2006).…”

The Law and Economics of Antidiscrimination Law

“…Finally Persico and Todd summarize the results of 16 other city and state-level racial profiling studies, which hint at an empirical regularity of no police bias against black drivers. In contrast, Gross and Barnes (2002) conclude from their analysis of the Maryland data that the Maryland State Police do use race to decide who to stop and who to search. This disparate treatment stems from the police effort to increase the minute percentage of stops that lead to drug seizures, they conclude.…”