Racial Prejudice and Police Stops: A Systematic Review of the Empirical Literature

Abstract

A police stop must be based on founded suspicion, an officer's ability to correctly discriminate suspicious behavior. However, police stops can be influenced by negative attitudes towards Black individuals. We conducted a systematic review of empirical articles published from 2014 until 2019 that investigated the relationship between racial prejudice and police stops on PsycInfo, using keywords such as "race", "ethnic", "police stop", "traffic stop", and "stop and frisk". Results included 16 studies conducted in the United States (US), England, Wales, and the Netherlands, and showed that: Black men were the most frequent targets of police stops; many individuals who have been stopped by the police reported negative perceptions of the police force; the Stop, Question, and Frisk strategy used by some US police departments proved to be a type of stop that favors racial selectivity; and that traffic stops were favorable environments for racially biased actions by officers. We conclude that institutional racism in police stops proves to be a problem shared by several countries, including Brazil. We suggest more investigations to characterize institutional racism in the police force and in other settings and interventions aimed at reducing individual biases and collective racist practices.

Race, local context, and traffic stops: an examination of racial profiling in traffic stops in rural and non-rural places

“…Research on racial profiling in traffic stops has consistently shown that the driver's race and ethnicity influences police decision-making (e.g. Barnum and Perfetti, 2010;Carroll and Gonzalez, 2014;Carvalho et al, 2022;Vito et al, 2017;Zhang and Zhang, 2021). A longstanding problem with this research, however, is the limited information about the effects of legal and other extra-legal factors on traffic stop outcomes (Batton and Kadleck, 2004;Engel et al, 2002).…”

Public Influence on the Ethnic Disparity in Stop-and-Search Statistics in Four London Boroughs

“…The occupational culture and practices of police departments can influence the execution and consequences of stop-and-search operations. Officer discretion, training guidelines, supervisory methods and performance indicators might influence the incidence, targeting and behaviour during these encounters [16].…”

On Double Jeopardy: Race and Gender Explain Intersectional Subjective Stigmatization Likely Additively, and Possibly Projectively, but Unlikely Multiplicatively

“…Minority men often experience stigmatization that is unique in their demographic background, and they may consequently consider the experience not only as an experience of racial stigmatization but also gender stigmatization. For example, a Black man may construe his experience of police brutality (Carvalho et. al., 2021) not only as racial discrimination but also as gender discrimination ("I wouldn't have experienced this if I were a woman").…”