The intersection of racial profiling research and the law

There has been a significant increase in the litigation of selective enforcement cases based on racial profiling claims. This trend has resulted in two legal issues that are problematic for racial profiling research. First, selective enforcement claims that rely on statistical evidence must successfully measure “similarly situated persons” who were eligible for police stops to provide a comparison against those actually stopped by police. Second, the research must demonstrate “how much” statistical evidence of racial/ethnic disparities exists. Although these legal components are necessary for successful selective enforcement claims, the methodologies and statistical analyses currently used in racial profiling research cannot adequately address these issues. It is argued that the over-reliance on social science research, in general, and statistical techniques, specifically, to provide evidence of discrimination in selective enforcement cases places policing research and legal decision making at a crossroads.     

Theory and racial profiling: Shortcomings and future directions in research

The volatile political environment that surrounds the issue of “racial profiling” has led local and state police agencies across the nation to start collecting information about traffic and pedestrian stops. The controversy over this issue is overwhelmed by the unsupported assumption that all race-based decision making by police officers is motivated by individual police officers' racial prejudice. This article reviews recently published studies on racial profiling and critiques both their methods and conclusions. Using the conceptual framework for police research presented by Bernard and Engel, it reviews a number of theories that may explain racial disparities in the rates of police stops. The authors argue that to explain police behavior better, theoretical models must guide future data collection efforts.     

On terror, drugs and racial profiling

We show that for racial profiling (defined as policy rules that employ statistical discrimination based on racial attributes) to be efficient in fighting ordinary crime, it needs to focus on the racial composition of marginal offenders. Efficiency thus may counter-intuitively call for targeting the group with the lower offending rates. In the context of terror, however, it has to be based primarily on differences in offending rates across racial population groups (group-wise averages). We demonstrate that, assuming correlation between race and crime, racial profiling would nearly always be efficient. Finally, we discuss equity considerations and suggest that if awarding compensation is perceived to be a viable policy option, it should be paid on an ex ante basis.     

Finding audiences, changing beliefs: the structure of research use in Canadian health policy

The impact of research information depends on its ability to change beliefs or policy assumptions within the relevant audiences. As a hybrid of American and British systems, Canada's chosen decision-making structure for policy-making and its legislative framework for health insurance make these audiences unclear and not readily accessible. This factor and historical characteristics of the research community which made them only partially responsive to the values of decisionmakers provide an explanation for the limited past use of research information in Canadian health policy. More recently, improved responsiveness by researchers and an emerging definition of the audiences by legislative policymakers are bringing about a gradual increase in the potential impact of research at the levels of administrative and clinical policy. Because of continuing decision-making constraints on legislative policy, however, impact at this level is predicted to remain diffuse, with only cautious acceptance of the changes in beliefs implied by research.     

Common ground: exploring policy approaches to addressing racial disparities from the left and the right

Although the existence of racial and ethnic disparities is increasingly recognized, a complete understanding of the causes and solutions to these problems remains elusive. Part One of this paper provides a historical overview of the origins of these disparities. Part Two outlines fundamental challenges to achieving a clear understanding of the problem and briefly discusses current policy strategies espoused by conservative and liberal proponents. Finally, Part Three provides an in-depth discussion of one promising approach with significant bipartisan support.     

The methodological struggles of racial profiling research: a causal question that automobile stop data has yet to answer

Automobile stop research finds that citizen race influences officer decision-making. Researchers, however, report methodological issues inhibiting them from drawing causal inferences about the existence of racial profiling. The purpose of this study is to deconstruct this field of inquiry through a causal lens to inform the next generation of scholarship. Through an analysis of automobile stop data, temporal ordering issues are exposed. Relating to association, most studies find that racial minorities are more likely to be searched, however, spuriousness issues continue to plague racial profiling studies as researchers rarely estimate departmental, passenger, vehicle, and temporal variables. To confront these issues, researchers are encouraged to engage in primary data collection and explore recent statistical innovations in their analytical strategies.     

Conflict theory and racial profiling: An empirical analysis of police traffic stop data

Using data collected by the Richmond, Virginia Police Department, this article applies conflict theory to police traffic stop practices. In particular, it explores whether police traffic stop, search, and arrest practices differ according to racial or socioeconomic factors among neighborhoods. Three principal findings emanate from this research. First, the total number of stops by Richmond police was determined solely by the crime rate of the neighborhood. Second, the percentage of stops that resulted in a search was determined by the percentage of Black population. Third, when examining the percentage of stops that ended in an arrest/summons, the analyses suggest that both the percentage of Black population and the area crime rate served to decrease the percentage of police stops that ended in an arrest/summons. Implications for conflict theory and police decision-making are addressed.     

Voicing concerns: The balance between data protection principles and research developments in forensic speech science

The status of forensic speech recordings among existing data protection guidance is not clear. The inherent nature of voice and the way in which forensic speech casework is currently allocated mean that there are additional barriers to incorporating real casework data into research activities. The key objective of this work is to explore data protection solutions that could enable the forensic speech science community to responsibly use real casework data for research and development purposes. While reviewing relevant guidance and rulings, issues such as proportionality, opportunism and data minimisation are addressed, as well as where voice sits in relation to the definition of “biometric data”. This paper ultimately places forensic speech recordings in the data protection context to illuminate the specific issues that arise for this data type.     

TRIPS下药品专利权与公共健康权的冲突和平衡

随着发达国家拥有的药品专利越来越集中,发展中国家因为得不到有效的药品而所遭受的危及公共健康权的疾病越来越多的情况下,TRIPS中的药品专利保护和公共健康权冲突加剧。本文以利益平衡为方法,论述了TRIPS利益保护的失衡以及如何采取措施使其平衡,从而达到有效保护公共健康权的目的。     

Reducing racial and ethnic health disparities: exploring an outcome-oriented agenda for research and policy

Eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health status and health care, a major focus of Healthy People 2010, remains on the national agenda and among the priorities for the administration of President George W. Bush. Even though the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities challenges the whole nation, individual states are on the front line of many initiatives and are often the focus of important policy efforts. In addition, it is important to focus on states because they are already responsible for much of the health and public health infrastructure, and several states have developed initiatives dating back to the release of Margaret Heckler's report on the gaps in health outcomes by race in 1985. This article makes the case for an outcome-oriented approach and provides a summary of lessons learned based upon preliminary investigations into constructing and applying two indices, the disparity reduction profile to measure effort and the disparity index to measure outcomes.     

Searching for direction: Courts,social science,and the adjudication of racial profiling claims

As an issue of contemporary legal and social concern, racial profiling has become part of the national discourse. As claims of racial profiling proliferate, courts are struggling to adjudicate them without sound social science research on law enforcement stop practices. This article reviews the methodological and analytical weaknesses inherent in most of the research on racial profiling and illustrates how these weaknesses have caused problems for courts in deciding racial profiling claims. It also presents a methodological strategy for curing many of the defects in previous racial profiling studies, thereby providing courts with a sound basis for deciding equal protection-based claims that often rely on statistical evidence.     

Lines and shadows: Perceptions of racial profiling and the Hispanic experience

Despite a longstanding research tradition examining the intersection of policing and race, extant research focused almost exclusively on race and ethnicity in Black and White terms. As such, academic knowledge of the Hispanic experience remained opaque. In this study, data from a random sample of New York City residents were used to compare the perceptions of racial profiling among Hispanic and non-Hispanic citizens. In particular, factors relating to the perception that racial profiling was widespread, justified, and personally experienced were examined. Findings were grounded within the literature on police-citizen relations and racial profiling.     

Dualism in data protection: Balancing the right to personal data and the data property right

This paper explores the issues surrounding the right to personal data and the data property right in the context of commercial transactions involving big data, and will thus inform the ongoing drafting process of the Chinese Civil Code and development of a commercial data market in China. The analysis herein attempts to break through the traditional concept of ‘property’ with the aim of helping China to develop a modern information society, devise a property law theory suitable for the big data era, and improve the level of protection afforded to rights and legitimate interests in data. To date, no comprehensive study has focused on developing a proper understanding of the concept of ‘data property rights’, and hence we lack the solid theoretical support needed to construct a proper protective system for such rights. This paper offers the first systematic study of the rules pertaining to data property rights, thereby enriching the theory of such rights and serving as a theoretical basis for the enactment of a civil code that protects citizens’ legal rights and interests in the information society. It also offers a thorough discussion of how to construct a data property protection system, thereby providing an ideal reference model for enactment of the Chinese Civil Code.     

Institutionalizing inequality in the courts: Decomposing racial and ethnic disparities in detention,conviction, and sentencing*

A significant body of literature has examined racial and ethnic inequalities in sentencing, focusing on how individual court actors make decisions, but fewer scholars have examined whether disparities are institutionalized through legal case factors. After finding racial and ethnic inequalities in pretrial detention, conviction, and incarceration based on 4 years of felony court data (N = 83,924) from Miami-Dade County, we estimate nonlinear decomposition models to examine how much of the inequalities are explained by differences in criminal history, charging, and for conviction and incarceration, pretrial detention. Results suggest that inequality is greatest between White non-Latinos and Black Latinos, followed by White non-Latinos and Black non-Latinos, ranging from 4 to more than 8 percentage points difference in the probability of pretrial detention, 7–13 points difference in conviction, 5–6 points in prison, and 4–10 points difference in jail. We find few differences between White non-Latinos and White Latinos. Between half and three-quarters of the inequality in pretrial detention, conviction, and prison sentences between White non-Latino and Black people is explained through legal case factors. Our findings indicate that inequality is, in part, institutionalized through legal case factors, suggesting these factors are not “race neutral” but instead racialized and contribute to inequalities in court outcomes.     

U.S. experiences with racial and ethnic profiling: history, current issues, and the future

The issue of racial and ethnic bias in policing has been the focus of legal and criminal justice scholarship, court action, and public debate in the U.S. for a number of years. The issue has also been prominent in criminal justice scholarship, public discussion, and policy making in other countries, particularly the U.K., for an even longer period. This article surveys the history of the issue in the U.S. and attempts to give scholars and policy makers the benefit of the insights gained through the U.S. experience in handling the issue. Among these are the importance of the empirical question of the “hit rate” and how police use of race or ethnicity as a criterion changes it, and the difficulties of dealing with the thorny benchmarking issue. The article also discusses how advocates in the U.S. have attempted to meet and overcome arguments that police and their supporters have made in an attempt to minimize the problem or justify doing little or nothing about it.     

Race matters: A critical look at racial profiling, it's a matter for the courts

The disproportionate number of minority motorists stopped by the police gives rise to a host of salient questions which center on contemporary police practices. Research has shown that traffic stops are routinely used as a “pretext” to stop minority drivers. In this article, the authors argue that the current police practice of disproportionately stopping minority motorists was formally sanctioned by the Supreme Court in Whren v. United States (1996). The current thrust to examine police practices will do little to end racial profiling, and the underpinnings of this problem, in part, lie in judicial precedent. The authors present the notion that in order to minimize racial profiling, the court must carve out an objective test from the Whren decision that will guide police behavior in the pretextual stops of motorists. The article concludes with a template of what this objective test may look like.