Racial Prejudice Predicts Police Militarization

Abstract

In the United States, police are becoming increasingly militarized. Whereas the racialized nature of police militarization has been documented, the relationship between racial prejudice and police militarization is less understood. We assessed the link between racial prejudice against Black and Native Americans and police militarization at individual and regional levels. Study 1 ( N = 765) recruited a nationally representative sample of White Americans and found a positive association between racial prejudice and support for police militarization. Study 2 ( N = 3,129,343) sourced regional aggregates of prejudice among White Americans from Project Implicit and policing data from the Defense Logistics Agency and found that police departments in states higher in prejudice acquired greater amounts of militarized equipment. Together, these studies demonstrate that, in terms of attitudes and policies, racial prejudice predicts police militarization.

Prejudicial reactions to the removal of Native American mascots

“…As it is possible that participants vary systematically from the population at large on an important but unknown variable (e.g., interest in racial topics), the generalizability of the present findings is limited. Despite these limitations, data sourced from Project Implicit remain a valuable resource for studying population-level prejudice, as evidenced by research showing regionally aggregated IAT scores are predictive of a variety of outcomes, including racial inequities in access to healthcare (Leitner et al, 2016, 2018), preterm births (Orchard & Price, 2017), COVID-19 cases and deaths (Cunningham & Wigfall, 2020; Thomas et al, 2020), school-based disciplinary actions (Riddle & Sinclair, 2019), and police militarization and use of lethal force (Hehman et al, 2018; Jimenez et al, 2021). Additionally, the measures of prejudice differed between Study 1 (bail recommendations) and Study 2 (IATs).…”

Inside the “black box” of 1033 Program military equipment use by local law enforcement

“…Ramey and Steidley (2018) find that high violent crime and a high percentage of Black residents increased agencies' military acquisitions, thus finding support for the rational choice and racial threat hypothesis arguments, respectively. Jimenez et al (2020) likewise find racial prejudice to be associated with 1033 Program participation, finding that campus police departments at Minority Serving Institutions are significantly more likely to acquire military equipment from the program than those departments serving Predominately White Institutions. Others have found agency practices like using civil asset forfeiture and having a dedicated SWAT team to be positively related to obtaining mineresistant ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles (Burkhardt and Baker, 2018).…”

“…Specific to the findings of Ramey and Steidley (2018) and Jimenez et al (2020), these analyses center around the racial threat hypothesis, which predicts that an increased majority perception of political, economic, and symbolic threats posed by a minority racial group (particularly Black Americans in the USA) will lead to a subsequent reaction of increased social control by the majority (Blalock, 1967). Given that the police are the enforcement arm of the political majority, racial threat hypothesis would predict that police reaction to increased political, economic, or symbolic gain by racial/ethnic minorities would lead to more punitive or militarized police responses.…”

“…Specific to the findings of Ramey and Steidley (2018) and Jimenez et al. (2020), these analyses center around the racial threat hypothesis, which predicts that an increased majority perception of political, economic, and symbolic threats posed by a minority racial group (particularly Black Americans in the USA) will lead to a subsequent reaction of increased social control by the majority (Blalock, 1967).…”