Searched minority drivers yield contraband less often than searched Whites.

Evidence

To get around the thorny issues of selecting benchmarks and establishing base rates, researchers have studied how police treat and interact with people of different races once they have already been stopped. A common area of focus is the decision to search. Searches are unique in that they have their own objective outcome, namely whether any contraband was recovered. Following this approach, Pierson and colleagues (2019) found that stopped Black and Hispanic drivers were searched at more than double the rate of stopped White drivers. Despite being searched more often, Hispanic drivers were found with contraband less often than searched White drivers (26 percent vs. 36 percent), and searched Black drivers were found with contraband somewhat less of the time (32 percent) than Whites. These results suggest that the bar for officers to conduct a search may be lower for community members of color. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 365

Searches are unique in that they have their own objective outcome, namely whether any contraband was recovered. Following this approach, Pierson and colleagues (2019) found that stopped Black and Hispanic drivers were searched at more than double the rate of stopped White drivers. Despite being searched more often, Hispanic drivers were found with contraband less often than searched White drivers (26 percent vs. 36 percent), and searched Black drivers were found with contraband somewhat less of the time (32 percent) than Whites. These results suggest that the bar for officers to conduct a search may be lower for community members of color. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 365

Categorization

• XREF: Hits the statistical-discrimination literature in similar spirit to the Milgrom/Roberts trade-institution chapters — where unequal treatment is assessed against objective outcome rates rather than contested base rates.
• SEED: Contraband-recovery rate as an outcome-validated proxy for bias offers an essay angle on how to measure discrimination without self-report.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 365