RACIAL PROFILING OR RACIST POLICING? BOUNDS TESTS IN AGGREGATE DATA*

doi:10.1111/j.0020-6598.2004.00293.x

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Wiley InterScience

International Economic Review

Volume 45 Issue 3, Pages 959 - 989

Published Online: 28 Jul 2004

Published on behalf of the University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University

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RACIAL PROFILING OR RACIST POLICING? BOUNDS TESTS IN AGGREGATE DATA*

Rubén Hernández-Murillo and John Knowles ¹

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; University of Pennsylvania

ABSTRACT

State-wide reports on police traffic stops and searches summarize very large populations, making them potentially powerful tools for identifying racial bias, particularly when statistics on search outcomes are included. But when the reported statistics conflate searches involving different levels of police discretion, standard tests for racial bias are not applicable. This article develops a model of police search decisions that allows for nondiscretionary searches and derives tests for racial bias in data that mix different search types. Our tests reject unbiased policing as an explanation of the disparate impact of motor-vehicle searches on minorities in Missouri.

Received: 2003; First Revision: 2004;

DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER (DOI)

10.1111/j.0020-6598.2004.00293.x About DOI