Affiliation:
1. Department of Sociology & Criminology University of Denver Denver Colorado USA
Abstract
AbstractIn Illinois vs. Wardlow (2000), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that presence in a “high‐crime” area is one factor that police can consider when establishing reasonable suspicion to justify a Terry stop. Some legal scholars argue that through this decision the Court propagated inequity in police stops by setting a lower evidentiary standard for establishing reasonable suspicion in neighborhoods with greater numbers Black residents, which are more likely than White neighborhoods to be considered crime hot spots. To assess these claims, I analyze pedestrian stop data from the Chicago Police Department for the years 2016 and 2017. Using spatial regression techniques, I evaluate relationships between neighborhood measures of Black disadvantage, police stop justifications, and “hit rates” of stops. The results suggest that reasonable suspicion is uniquely constructed in disadvantaged Black neighborhoods but that this does not result in significantly different enforcement rates. Based on these results, I argue that policing scholars must reconsider sources of inequity in policing and, in particular, consider the role of the law in shaping these outcomes.
Funder
Division of Social and Economic Sciences
Subject
Law,Sociology and Political Science