Crime-rate differences cannot fully explain racial disparities in police stops.

Evidence

In response to claims that law enforcement target people of color, a common refrain is that police are simply “going where the crime is.” If high crime areas have higher concentrations of African Americans and if it is seen as an effective policing strategy to stop more people in these high crime areas, then a consequence, even if an indirect one, is that more African Americans will be stopped. Further, there is evidence of racial disparities in rates of violent crime (Federal Bureau of Investigations, 2013; 2016; Morgan & Truman, 2018). To the extent that different groups commit crimes at different rates, we would expect police contact and stop rates to mirror those differences. In these scenarios, race is not the driving factor; crime is. While crime certainly shapes enforcement patterns, the evidence demonstrates that higher rates of police contact with community members of color, relative to Whites, cannot be fully explained by general crime rates (e.g., Hetey et al., 2016a) or by differential rates of criminal activity between racial groups (Gelman, Fagan, & Kiss, 2007). — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 361

Categorization

• XREF: Directly undercuts the ‘going where the crime is’ defense, echoing the institutional-analysis theme running through Milgrom and the diamond trade readings about how explanations that sound reasonable collapse under empirical scrutiny. — connects to: Ambiguous police stops confirm minorities’ belief that officers are racist