The Problem of Bias in Policing
From 2015-2016, 1,146 victims of police violence lost their lives. More disturbingly, however, is that 38.5% of them were minorities, mainly African Americans (Bui, Coates & Matthay, 2018). This is problematic because African Americans do not even make up 25% of the population of the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2018). All the same African Americans are over 50% more likely to be killed by police than their demographic indicates should be an equal ratio. Why are black men more likely to be shot by police than any other demographic? James (2018) notes simply that “research on police officers has found that they tend to associate African Americans with threat” (p. 30). Yet James (2018) has also noted that implicit bias is not the only factor in determining outcomes when police run into minorities in their line of work: other variables are impactful; simple things such as the amount of sleep the officer had the night before can reduce or inflame the officer’s implicit bias with regard to associations of African Americans and possession of weapons (James, 2018). What this suggests is that there are other conscious and unconscious elements to how an officer may handle his own implicit bias and whether he allows it to master him or whether he masters it.
Hehman, Flake and Calanchini (2018) have shown that disproportionate use of lethal force by police officers against black men has been linked with regional racial biases of residents as measured by the use of Harvard’s Project Implicit study—a study that offers participants the opportunity to take an Implicit Attitudes Test. Hehman et al. (2018) argued that the results of these tests in different parts of the country show that cultural sociological factors are part of the psychological phenomenon of implicit bias. Some researchers seek to find ways to mitigate the risk of implicit bias by advocating for the use of body cameras or by modifying procedural justice...
References
Bandura, A. (2018). Toward a psychology of human agency: Pathways and reflections. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 130-136.
Bui, A. L., Coates, M. M., & Matthay, E. C. (2018). Years of life lost due to encounters with law enforcement in the USA, 2015–2016. J Epidemiol Community Health, jech-2017.
Hehman, E., Flake, J. K., & Calanchini, J. (2018). Disproportionate use of lethal force in policing is associated with regional racial biases of residents. Social psychological and personality science, 9(4), 393-401.
James, L. (2018). The Stability of Implicit Racial Bias in Police Officers. Police Quarterly, 21(1), 30-52.
James, L., Fridell, L., & Straub Jr, F. (2016). Implicit bias versus the Ferguson effect. Police Chief, 83, 44-51.
Nix, J., Campbell, B. A., Byers, E. H., & Alpert, G. P. (2017). A bird's eye view of civilians killed by police in 2015: Further evidence of implicit bias. Criminology & Public Policy, 16(1), 309-340.
Runge, E. & Hall, G. (2018). Officer shoots, kills armed security guard outside south suburban bar. Retrieved from https://wgntv.com/2018/11/11/multiple-wounded-in-robbins-bar-shooting-police-say/
U.S. Census Bureau. (2018). Population of the United States by Race and Hispanic/Latino Origin, Census 2000 and 2010. Retrieved from https://www.infoplease.com/us/race-population/population-united-states-race-and-hispaniclatino-origin-census-2000-and-2010
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