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Racial profiling is an important issue in contemporary policing. Research in this area, especially in the decision to search, has relied on an outcomes test and correlates that are largely devoid of theory. Thus, the research is unable to provide a clear understanding of police decision making during a traffic stop. The purpose of the present study was to examine this process. Using data from more than 36,000 traffic stops from Louisville, KY, the present study applies the focal concerns theory to this decision-making process. The research results indicate that blameworthiness is the primary reason that searches are performed for the entire sample of traffic stops as well as those for the Black and White subsamples.

This study uses the Barnett scale of homicide severity to analyze the capital sentencing process in Kentucky. In his analysis of Georgia cases, Barnett found that whites were disproportionately the victims of homicides that the scale considered as most serious. This conclusion was cited as an explanation for racial disparity in capital sentencing. When the scale is applied to Kentucky data and the level of seriousness of the murder is controlled, however, we Jind that prosecutors were more likely to seek the death penalty in cases in which blacks killed whites and that juries were more likely to sentence to death blacks who killed whites.

This study examines the impact of the revitalization of low-income, public housing properties on homicide patterns. It tracks the movement of homicide clusters from the initial properties to those neighborhoods where public housing residents were displaced over a 19-year period in Louisville, Kentucky. The median-income level of residents and vacant housing emerged as important predictors of homicide clusters. This article concludes that low-income public housing and Section 8 housing properties provide an environment where homicides are likely to occur. This pattern remained in effect even when the nature of public housing changed.