Reasonable Mistakes and Regulative Norms: Racial Bias in Defensive Harm

Reparations for Police Killings

“…Accountability measures should thus interpret mistaken acts of self-defense strictly, and not make allowances for error.An implication of the account I present in this article may be the idea that criminal justice should be concerned with whether an officer acts reasonably, whereas civil justice (or reparative justice) should be concerned with a civilian’s liability. Although assessing this notion further is beyond the scope of this article, I am open to Bolinger’s (2017) claim that pervasive racial bias argues for factoring liability into questions of criminal punishment.…”

“…An implication of the account I present in this article may be the idea that criminal justice should be concerned with whether an officer acts reasonably, whereas civil justice (or reparative justice) should be concerned with a civilian's liability. Although assessing this notion further is beyond the scope of this article, I am open to Bolinger's (2017) claim that pervasive racial bias argues for factoring liability into questions of criminal punishment. 14 Though I focus on the black experience in this article, the idea of a distinct racial wrong also applies to Native people, who are often racialized as violent and are killed at similar rates as black people by the police (Zimring 2017, 45).…”

“…Though officers and civilians exhibited similar levels of bias in terms of response time, officers (unlike civilians) did not show racial bias in "accurately" deciding when to shoot and not shoot in the simulation. 13 In her work on self-defense theory, Bolinger (2017) argues that, under ideal conditions, it would be desirable to have regulatory norms allowing wellintentioned self-defenders to make mistakes about a person's liability to harm. However, empirical evidence of pervasive racial bias casts doubt on the justice of such norms.…”

“…13In her work on self-defense theory, Bolinger (2017) argues that, under ideal conditions, it would be desirable to have regulatory norms allowing well-intentioned self-defenders to make mistakes about a person’s liability to harm. However, empirical evidence of pervasive racial bias casts doubt on the justice of such norms.…”

The Moral Grounds of Reasonably Mistaken Self‐Defense

“…I will note the differences between the account I ultimately offer and Ferzan's proposal in §5. While I engaged with the question of which mistakes we should treat as reasonable in Bolinger (2017b), I there set aside moral underpinnings in order to focus on policy recommendations. I only gestured vaguely at how the moral story might go, viz: "society can treat some behaviors as marked 'signals' of aggression, licensing agents to assume (absent countervailing evidence) that the performer is an aggressor.…”