Testing Racial Profiling: Empirical Assessment of Disparate Treatment by Police
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Testing Racial Profiling: Empirical Assessment of
Disparate Treatment by Police
Sonja B. Starrt
Statistical evidence plays a central role in litigation, scholarship,
and public debates about race and policing. At one level, the statistical
picture is clear: people of color in the United States, especially black
men, interact with police far more often than white Americans do.
Black Americans are about 2.5 times more likely to be arrested each
year as their white counterparts.' Local studies show even larger racial
disparities in the frequency of stops and use of force, although there are
no national numbers.2
But while these gaps' existence is not contested, the reasons for
them are. An especially hotly disputed question is whether and to what
t Professor of Law, University of Michigan. For comments and helpful discussions on prior
versions, I am grateful to Alicia Davis, Aviana Eisenberg, Mark Fancher, Jim Greiner, Sam Gross,
Louis Kaplow, Randy Kennedy, Anup Malani, Jonathan Masur, David Moran, J.J. Prescott, Eve
Brensike Primus, Jon Sacks, Margo Schlanger, Michael Steinberg, Matthew Stephenson, and Kim
Thomas, as well as Legal Forum participants and workshop participants at Harvard, University of
Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Texas, University of Wisconsin, University of
Colorado, and UC-Berkeley. Brian Apel, Grady Bridges, Alex Harris, Avi Kupfer, Linfeng Li, and
Andrew Sand provided excellent research assistance.
' According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics Arrest Data Analysis Tool, the 2012 arrest
rate was ten percent for black adults and four percent for whites; disparities are larger for more
serious crimes. The Bureau of Justice Statistics's national estimates are not broken down by
Hispanic ethnicity, or by race and sex combined. Arrest Data Analysis Tool, BUREAU OF JUST.
STATISTICS, http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.cfm# (follow National
Estimates hyperlink, then follow Trend Tables by Race hyperlink).
See, e.g., ACLU, BLACK, BROWN, AND TARGETED: A REPORT ON BOSTON POLICE
DEPARTMENT STREET ENCOUNTERS FROM 2007-2010, 1 (2014), https://aclum.org/app/uploads/2015/
06/reports-black-brown-and-targeted.pdf [https://perma.cc/GT9J-QTSC] (finding large disparities
in pedestrian stop-and-frisk rates in Boston); see Jodi M. Brown & Patrick A. Langan, BUREAU OF
JUST. STATISTICS, NCJ 180987, POLICING AND HOMICIDE, 1976-1998: JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE BY
POLICE, POLICE OFFICERS MURDERED BY FELONS (2001), at iii (finding blacks four times as likely
as whites to be killed by police); Bernard E. Harcourt, Rethinking Racial Profiling: A Critique of
the Economics, Civil Liberties, and Constitutional Literature, and of Criminal Profiling More
Generally, 71 U. CHI. L. REV. 1275, 1275-76 (2004) (describing traffic stop disparities); Rachel
Harmon, Why Do We (Still) Lack Data on Policing?, 96 MARQ. L. REV. 1119, 1139-40 (2013) (calling
for better data collection). A new, federally funded initiative seeks to build a national database on
stops and use of force. Ctr. for Policing Equity, Nation's First Police Profiling Database Awarded
Grant By NSF (Nov. 7, 2013), http://policingequity.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/database
_releasejfinal.pdf [https://perma.cc/XW8B-ZJLK].
485](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/uchclf2016&div=15&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Testing Racial Profiling: Empirical Assessment of Disparate Treatment by Police
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