NCJ Number
220323
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 34 Issue: 10 Dated: October 2007 Pages: 1262-1283
Date Published
October 2007
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This article proposes a theory that explains individual police behavior that results in the documented overrepresentation of Blacks and Hispanics in police stops, searches, and arrests; and a research agenda is presented for empirically testing and verifying the theory.
Abstract
The proposed theory argues that although explicit racism by the police is relatively rare today and has little to do with the racial disparities in police stops, officers may still make discretionary decisions based on racial considerations that include the conditioned belief that certain racial minorities are more likely to be involved in various types of law violations. For some crimes, this belief is supported by crime statistics, as in the case of violent crime; however, in other cases, police beliefs about the link between race and crime are incorrect, such as the belief that minorities are disproportionately involved in drug crime. These conditioned beliefs about the disproportionate link between street crimes and minorities are referred to in this theory as the "illusory correlation" phenomenon. Among social psychologists, this concept refers to a purported correlation between two classes of events that are either uncorrelated or are correlated to a lesser degree than reported (Chapman, 1967). Research has found such a pattern in research subjects' overestimation of undesirable behaviors by minority group members. Such group stereotypes may stem from and reinforce existing socially learned or culturally transmitted behavioral stereotypes of various racial groups. Research designed to test this theory of unconscious racial stereotyping is suggested. 110 references