A small but growing body of research has produced several consistent findings regarding race and ethnic differences in traffic stops, searches, and arrests. However, prior research has not adequately addressed the potential bias associated with the use of residential population data to estimate the racial composition of the drivers in local areas. The authors present a new method of imputing the racial composition of drivers in a given locality based on the size and composition of nearby areas. Applying the method to traffic-stop data for 92 Missouri municipalities, the authors produce more accurate estimates than those based on residential population data of racial disproportionality in traffic stops for several suburban areas surrounding the city of St. Louis. Nonetheless, they find small but persistent group differences in the probability of being pulled over by the police for the 92 municipalities and larger differences in the probability of being searched and arrested.
We conducted a randomizedcontrolled trial (RCT) of a social interaction training program to determine its effectiveness in improving attitudes and behaviors among police officers. Survey data and a series of difference-indifference tests found that participating in the training program improved attitudes with treatment group officers placing higher priorities on procedurally fair communication during a hypothetical officer-citizen encounter. An interrupted time-series analysis of official use-of-force reports provided no evidence that the training program altered officer behavior. Policy Implications: Policing scholars and reformers have increasingly called for improvements to police training that emphasize communication and deescalation skills. Although many programs addressing these issues exist, evidence of their effectiveness has been scarce. Our findings provide evidence that such training may improve police officer attitudes but perhaps not behaviors.
Tyler's process-based model of policing suggests that the police can enhance their perceived legitimacy and trustworthiness in the eyes of the public when they exercise their authority in a procedurally fair manner. To date, most process-based research has focused on the sources of legitimacy while largely overlooking trust in the police. The present study extends this line of literature by examining the sources of trust in the police. In particular, emerging research has revealed that neighborhood context influences attitudes toward the police but much less attention has been given to exploring the role individuals' perceptions of their neighborhood play in shaping such evaluations. Therefore, the present study considers whether individuals' perceptions of collective efficacy serve as a social-psychological cognitive orientation that influences levels of trust in the police. Using data from a recently conducted mail survey of a random sample of 1,681 residents from a metropolitan city, we find that procedural justice evaluations are a primary source of trust in the police. At the same time, however, level of perceived collective efficacy is positively associated with trust even after accounting for procedural justice. The findings suggest that police procedural fairness is vitally important to establishing trust from the public but peoples'
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.