Making Sure Justice Stays
Blind
Tackling the pervasive problem of racial
profiling.
By Jack McDevitt, Deborah Ramirez, and Amy Farrell
Dr. Elmo Randolph, a forty-two-year-old dentist who commutes from Bergen
County, New Jersey, to his office near Newark, has had the unfortunate
experience of being stopped by state troopers more than fifty times since
1991. His offense? Not driving too fast. Not driving drunk.
He suspects his crime was "driving while black."
The experience of Randolph, an African-American, represents the unwelcome
social phenomenon of racial profiling-when it appears that police officers
use race to make decisions about whom to stop, search, or cite-an illegal
and unconstitutional practice. In the case of Dr. Randolph, troopers have
repeatedly approached his gold BMW, requested his license and registration,
and asked, "Do you have any drugs or weapons in your car?"
Last year, Northeastern's Center for Criminal Justice Policy Research
(CCJPR) conducted national research on racial profiling in traffic stops
and searches. Our work led to the creation of a resource guide for police
on how to collect data on the practice.
We found that collecting data on racial profiling, in and of itself,
doesn't solve the problem of community distrust of police. Rather, we learned
the collection and analysis of data on traffic and pedestrian stops can
and should serve as a catalyst for dialogue between local police departments
and communities of color. In other words, data collection can be a tool
to get people talking and promote better relations.
CCJPR and the College of Criminal Justice work under the premise that
academic institutions can offer the criminal justice community information
and resources aimed at making policy changes that advance social justice.
For example, for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, we conducted the
first-ever survey asking how law-enforcement officials perceive and respond
to federal requirements about reporting hate crimes. That study was cited
by President Clinton as the impetus for new federal directives on hate-crime
reporting announced in September.
CCJPR has also conducted surveys for the Boston Police Department about
the long-term physical and psychological harm caused by hate crime, and
has evaluated the department's strategic-planning initiatives.
When the opportunity to delve into racial profiling emerged, we were
excited by the prospect. CCJPR has long sought to provide insight into
how agents within the criminal justice system-police, prosecutors, judges-use
their discretionary powers. Racial profiling offers one of the most revealing
examples of how such power can be abused.
In fact, racial profiling has emerged as an issue of great concern among
communities of color. In the late 1990s, the American news media exploded
with stories about racial profiling. Allega-tions became so common that
the phenomenon was labeled with the derisive terms "driving while
black" or "driving while brown."
National surveys confirm that a majority of Americans, regardless of
race, believe racial profiling is a significant social problem. According
to a Gallup Poll released in December 1999, over half the respondents believe
the police actively engage in the practice of racial profiling. More significantly,
81 percent say they disapprove of the practice.
In a national sample of adults, 59 percent say racial profiling is widespread.
When the responses to the survey questions are broken down by race, 56
percent of whites and 77 percent of African-Americans believe racial profiling
is pervasive.
In New Jersey, the experiences of Randolph and other minority drivers
led to a recent consent decree and settlement between the state and the
Department of Justice. As a result, New Jersey State Police are now collecting
data on the race and ethnicity of all persons stopped by state troopers,
and efforts to improve the troopers' supervision and training have begun.
CCJPR's involvement with the issue began last fall, after the Bureau
of Justice Assistance funded a proposal by law professor Deborah Ramirez
to examine existing strategies for collecting data on racial profiling.
Deborah had been asked to submit the proposal by members of the Justice
Department's Civil Rights Division after she chaired a session on racial
profiling at a 1999 Washington, D.C., conference on police-integrity issues.
The conference had underscored for her the lack of information and resources
to help jurisdictions collect racial-profiling data.
To design a comprehensive guide for state and local law-enforcement
agencies interested in collecting data about traffic stops, Deborah solicited
the help of CCJPR director and criminal justice professor Jack McDevitt
and senior research associate Amy Farrell.
Deborah had already been working with Jack and Amy since 1997 on another
project dealing with police accountability and discretion, in which they
examined why African-American defendants in Dorchester District Court were
disproportionately receiving mandatory minimum sentences for distributing drugs in school zones. The study
uncovered racial disparities that could not be fully explained by either
the defendants' role in their crimes, the quantity of drugs they carried,
or their criminal history.
To design the racial-profiling data-collection guide, we traveled to
five sites-North Carolina, New Jersey, San Jose, San Diego, and London-where
traffic-stop data-collection programs were beginning. The Justice Department
had identified these sites as "promising data-collection experiments,"
representing a variety of population sizes and geographic locations.
We interviewed individuals from the various police agencies-everyone
from supervisors to technical staff-to determine the feasibility of collecting
traffic-stop data. We also met with community groups and local agencies
that were either working with or monitoring police on the issue.
After collecting information from the research sites, we came back to
campus to analyze the strengths and challenges of each data-collection
method. Each jurisdiction had developed its own system. For example, San
Jose police would call information into a computer-aided dispatch center,
using codes to indicate race, gender, and age of the driver; the reason
for the stop; and the outcome. In North Carolina and England, police filled
out paper forms later turned in for data entry.
We examined the effectiveness of each system on the basis of a variety
of criteria, including the development process for each system, the cost
of implementation and training, the time necessary for officers to gather
data, the accuracy of the data, officer resistance, and the sufficiency
of data for analysis purposes.
Out of our analysis came a set of recommendations for model data-collection
systems that the Justice Department is distributing to all law-enforcement
agencies this fall. And though it's important that this guide be in the
hands of police officers around the country, an equally important finding
of our work is that successful data-collection systems should include a
role and a voice for community groups. We found those jurisdictions that
involved community members in the planning and design process for data-collection
mechanisms enhanced goodwill toward police and ultimately developed superior
systems.
We have now embarked on a new phase of this work. For a number of jurisdictions
already collecting racial-profiling data, we have begun to analyze their
data. Over the summer, we conducted a preliminary analysis for the Washington
State Police; we also provided technical assistance to Seattle's police
department in examining existing data and developing additional racial-profiling
data-collection designs. And this fall, we are beginning a comprehensive
project with the state of Rhode Island to assist in the design, implementation,
and analysis of that state's legislatively imposed police-stop data-collection
system.
Ideally, a central goal of social science research is to provide policy
makers and practitioners with tools to understand and interpret social
problems. We believe CCJPR's research into racial profiling and related
topics has been helpful-and will continue to be helpful-as police departments
and criminal justice agencies work with increasingly diverse communities,
and strive to maintain integrity and public confidence.
Jack McDevitt is an assistant professor at the College of Criminal
Justice and the director of the Center for Criminal Justice Policy Research.
Deborah Ramirez is a professor and Amy Farrell a student at the School
of Law.
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