In many communities, the practice of racial profiling and ethnic discrimination is still commonplace. RAND studies have shown the effects of ethnic and racial discrimination on health care utilization, children's mental health, job markets, and sports, as well as in police departments, where racial profiling prevention training is now common.
RAND has developed a fair, yet rigorous approach to analyzing traffic stop data for racial bias. Based on five years of data from the Cincinnati Police Department, the approach addresses bias in the decision to stop, flags officers with disparate stop patterns, and assesses bias in search and citation rates.
Report
Describes several approaches for detecting racial profiling by police and calls for their use in monitoring the implementation of state and local immigration laws.
Journal Article
We examined the contribution of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination to disparities in problem behaviors among preadolescent Black, Latino, and White youths.
Journal Article
Disparities in prison and diversion to drug treatment among drug-involved offenders affect hundreds of thousands of citizens and might reinforce imbalances in criminal justice and health outcomes.
Commentary
It is thus not surprising that people report a willingness to trade convenience, money, and liberty for security. Legal precedent reinforces that decreased civil liberties may be accepted when confronting existential threats with demonstrably effective security—to a point, writes Henry H. Willis.
Journal Article
Perceptions of discrimination based on race/ethnicity and Medicaid insurance are prevalent and are associated with substantially lower CAHPS reports and ratings of care. Practices must develop and implement strategies to reduce perceived discrimination among patients.
Commentary
Perpetrators of hate-crimes against Sikhs often think they're attacking Muslims. This may not make the slaughter any more or less heinous, but it's another example of hatred flowing from ignorance, writes Jonah Blank.
Journal Article
Discusses an array of methods that have been used to assess, using data on stops made by police officers, the existence or extent of racially biased policing.
Journal Article
Many police agencies began collecting information on the stops made by their officers. This chapter describes an array of benchmarking methods that have been used around the country including the use of U.S. Census population estimates, non-at-fault driver crash data, crime and arrest data, drivers' license data, red light cameras, observations, instrumental variables, assessments of post-stop outcomes, and officer-to officer comparison via internal benchmarks.
Journal Article
Presents a statistical method to flag police officers who may potentially exhibit racial bias when making pedestrian stops.
Commentary
President Obama called the arrest of Professor Henry Gates a "teachable moment." This is a moment to learn the facts of race and policing these days. Racial profiling has indeed been an ugly reality for many years. But our research finds little evidence that it continues to be a major problem, write Greg Ridgeway and Nelson Lim.
News Release
The first multi-dimensional effort to quantify the disparities faced by African-American and Latino boys and men in California across a broad spectrum of health and social factors provides a disquieting outlook for their lives.
Report
Investigates the relationship between metropolitan-level segregation measures and individual-level health outcomes and estimates the causal impact of neighborhood disadvantage on health.
Journal Article
A study of several hundred randomly sampled video recordings from police cars on traffic stops in Cincinnati, Ohio revealed key differences in interactions between officers and suspects depending on their race.
Journal Article
Over 20% of South Africans aged 15-49 years are infected with HIV. Misinformation about the epidemic has arisen among black Africans, including genocidal conspiracy beliefs about the role of government and whites in causing the epidemic.
Commentary
Good relations between the police and the public are a cornerstone of civil society. Everyday interactions between cops and citizens are at the heart of what defines those relations, write Jack Riley and Greg Ridgeway.
Journal Article
The "veil of darkness" hypothesis asserts that police are less likely to know the race of a motorist before making a stop after dark than they are during daylight. This can be used to test for racial profiling in traffic stops.
News Release
February 28, 2007 news release: Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly Announces That the RAND Corporation Will Conduct an Assessment of How the New York City Police Department Conducts Pedestrian Stops.
Report
Incorporating Traffic Enforcement Racial Profiling Analyses into Police Department Early Intervention Systems
Commentary
Published commentary by RAND staff: Racial Profiling Won't Stop Terror, in Washingtonpost.com.
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