A Collective Impact: Interim Report on the Inquiry into Racial Profiling and Racial Discrimination of Black Persons by the Toronto Police Service
"Between 2013 and 2017, a Black person in Toronto was nearly 20 times
more likely than a White person to be involved in a fatal shooting by
the Toronto Police Service (TPS). Despite making up only 8.8% of
Toronto’s population, data obtained by the Ontario Human Rights
Commission (OHRC) from the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) shows that
Black people were over-represented in use of force cases (28.8%),
shootings (36%), deadly encounters (61.5%) and fatal shootings (70%).
Black men make up 4.1% of Toronto’s population, yet were complainants in
a quarter of SIU cases alleging sexual assault by TPS officers.
SIU Director’s Reports reveal a lack of legal basis for police
stopping or detaining Black civilians in the first place; inappropriate
or unjustified searches during encounters; and unnecessary charges or
arrests. The information analyzed by the OHRC also raises broader
concerns about officer misconduct, transparency and accountability.
Courts and arms-length oversight bodies have found that TPS officers
have sometimes provided biased and untrustworthy testimony, have
inappropriately tried to stop the recording of incidents and/or have
failed to cooperate with the SIU."
Your resource for news, research, opinion and comment in the world of Criminology and Criminal Justice, brought to you by the Criminology Library, Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto
Showing posts with label racial bias. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racial bias. Show all posts
Smart, Safe, and Fair: Strategies to Prevent Youth Violence, Heal Victims of Crime, and Reduce Racial Inequality
"The justice system treats youth charged with violent offenses in ways that are unnecessarily expensive, ineffective and unjust. Although the research is clear that many youth convicted of a violent crime are best treated in a community-based setting, our default response to youth violence is still confinement. In Smart, Safe, and Fair, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) and the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC) spoke with members of the victims’ community to further examine the barriers to treating youth involved in violent crime in the community, and to gauge their support for these proposed reforms.
The crime victims we spoke with were consistent in their support for a change from a status quo they see as costly, ineffective, and damaging to youth and their families—all while failing to meet the needs of crime victims themselves. Instead, they expressed a belief that there should be no categorical bar on serving more young people involved in violent crime in the community, particularly because youth engaged in violence are overwhelmingly victims themselves, and should receive appropriate services."
Link to Full Report
"The justice system treats youth charged with violent offenses in ways that are unnecessarily expensive, ineffective and unjust. Although the research is clear that many youth convicted of a violent crime are best treated in a community-based setting, our default response to youth violence is still confinement. In Smart, Safe, and Fair, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) and the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC) spoke with members of the victims’ community to further examine the barriers to treating youth involved in violent crime in the community, and to gauge their support for these proposed reforms.
The crime victims we spoke with were consistent in their support for a change from a status quo they see as costly, ineffective, and damaging to youth and their families—all while failing to meet the needs of crime victims themselves. Instead, they expressed a belief that there should be no categorical bar on serving more young people involved in violent crime in the community, particularly because youth engaged in violence are overwhelmingly victims themselves, and should receive appropriate services."
Link to Full Report
Field-Data Study Finds No Evidence of Racial Bias in Predictive Policing
"While predictive policing aims to improve the effectiveness of police patrols, there is concern that these algorithms may lead police to target minority communities and result in discriminatory arrests. A computer scientist in the school of Science at IUPUI conducted the first study to look at real-time field data from Los Angeles and found predictive policing did not result in biased arrests."
View the Full-Text Article
"While predictive policing aims to improve the effectiveness of police patrols, there is concern that these algorithms may lead police to target minority communities and result in discriminatory arrests. A computer scientist in the school of Science at IUPUI conducted the first study to look at real-time field data from Los Angeles and found predictive policing did not result in biased arrests."
View the Full-Text Article
While predictive
policing aims to improve the effectiveness of police patrols, there is
concern that these algorithms may lead police to target minority
communities and result in discriminatory arrests. A computer scientist
in the School of Science at IUPUI conducted the first study to look at
real-time field data from Los Angeles and found predictive policing did
not result in biased arrests.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-field-data-evidence-racial-bias-policing.html#jCp
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-field-data-evidence-racial-bias-policing.html#jCp
While predictive
policing aims to improve the effectiveness of police patrols, there is
concern that these algorithms may lead police to target minority
communities and result in discriminatory arrests. A computer scientist
in the School of Science at IUPUI conducted the first study to look at
real-time field data from Los Angeles and found predictive policing did
not result in biased arrests.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-field-data-evidence-racial-bias-policing.html#jCp
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-field-data-evidence-racial-bias-policing.html#jCp
While predictive
policing aims to improve the effectiveness of police patrols, there is
concern that these algorithms may lead police to target minority
communities and result in discriminatory arrests. A computer scientist
in the School of Science at IUPUI conducted the first study to look at
real-time field data from Los Angeles and found predictive policing did
not result in biased arrests.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-field-data-evidence-racial-bias-policing.html#jCp
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-field-data-evidence-racial-bias-policing.html#jCp
How to Fight Bias with Predictive Policing
"Law enforcement's use of predictive analytics recently came under fire again. Dartmouth researchers made waves reporting that simple predictive models—as well as nonexpert humans—predict crime just as well as the leading proprietary analytics software. That the leading software achieves (only) human-level performance might not actually be a deadly blow, but a flurry of press from dozens of news outlets has quickly followed. In any case, even as this disclosure raises questions about one software tool’s credibility, a more enduring, inherent quandary continues to plague predictive policing.
Crime-predicting models are caught in a quagmire doomed to controversy because, on their own, they cannot realize racial equity. It’s an intrinsically unsolvable problem. It turns out that, although such models succeed in flagging (assigning higher probabilities to) both black and white defendants with equal precision, as a result of doing so they also falsely flag black defendants more often than white ones. In this article I cover this seemingly paradoxical predicament and show how predictive policing—more generally, big data in law enforcement—can be turned around to make the legal system fairer in this unfair world."
"Law enforcement's use of predictive analytics recently came under fire again. Dartmouth researchers made waves reporting that simple predictive models—as well as nonexpert humans—predict crime just as well as the leading proprietary analytics software. That the leading software achieves (only) human-level performance might not actually be a deadly blow, but a flurry of press from dozens of news outlets has quickly followed. In any case, even as this disclosure raises questions about one software tool’s credibility, a more enduring, inherent quandary continues to plague predictive policing.
Crime-predicting models are caught in a quagmire doomed to controversy because, on their own, they cannot realize racial equity. It’s an intrinsically unsolvable problem. It turns out that, although such models succeed in flagging (assigning higher probabilities to) both black and white defendants with equal precision, as a result of doing so they also falsely flag black defendants more often than white ones. In this article I cover this seemingly paradoxical predicament and show how predictive policing—more generally, big data in law enforcement—can be turned around to make the legal system fairer in this unfair world."
Bail Reform and Risk Assessment: The Cautionary Tale of Federal Sentencing
"Across the country, from New Jersey to Texas to California, bail reform is being debated, implemented, and litigated at the state and local levels. Lawmakers and the public are learning that cash bail is excessive, discriminatory, and costly for taxpayers and communities. With promises to replace judicial instincts with validated algorithms and to reserve detention for high-risk defendants, risk assessment tools have become a hallmark of contemporary pretrial reform. Risk assessment tools have proliferated despite substantial criticisms that the tools depend upon and reinforce racially biased data and that the tools’ accuracy is overblown or unknown. Part I of this Note examines contemporary bail practices, recent reforms, and risk assessments’ promises and shortcomings. Part II discusses federal sentencing reform, which originally sought a more empirical approach to criminal justice but failed. Part III applies the lesson of sentencing reform to bail reform today. Despite endorsing empirical tools, legislatures are prone to interfering with the evidence that informs those tools or with the tools themselves. Even after reforms, system actors retain misaligned incentives to incarcerate too many people. Technocratic instruments like risk assessments may obscure but cannot answer tough, fundamental questions of system design. But recent pretrial reforms have shown early signs of progress. If risk assessments are paired with adequate safeguards, sustained reductions in incarceration and progress toward equal treatment may be possible."
"Across the country, from New Jersey to Texas to California, bail reform is being debated, implemented, and litigated at the state and local levels. Lawmakers and the public are learning that cash bail is excessive, discriminatory, and costly for taxpayers and communities. With promises to replace judicial instincts with validated algorithms and to reserve detention for high-risk defendants, risk assessment tools have become a hallmark of contemporary pretrial reform. Risk assessment tools have proliferated despite substantial criticisms that the tools depend upon and reinforce racially biased data and that the tools’ accuracy is overblown or unknown. Part I of this Note examines contemporary bail practices, recent reforms, and risk assessments’ promises and shortcomings. Part II discusses federal sentencing reform, which originally sought a more empirical approach to criminal justice but failed. Part III applies the lesson of sentencing reform to bail reform today. Despite endorsing empirical tools, legislatures are prone to interfering with the evidence that informs those tools or with the tools themselves. Even after reforms, system actors retain misaligned incentives to incarcerate too many people. Technocratic instruments like risk assessments may obscure but cannot answer tough, fundamental questions of system design. But recent pretrial reforms have shown early signs of progress. If risk assessments are paired with adequate safeguards, sustained reductions in incarceration and progress toward equal treatment may be possible."
Facial Recognition Software might have a Racial Bias Problem
"In 16 'undisclosed locations' across northern Los Angeles, digital eyes watch the public. These aren’t ordinary police-surveillance cameras; these cameras are looking at your face. Using facial-recognition software, the cameras can recognize individuals from up to 600 feet away. The faces they collect are then compared, in real-time, against 'hot lists' of people suspected of gang activity or having an open arrest warrant.
Considering arrest and
incarceration rates across L.A., chances are high that those hot lists
disproportionately implicate African Americans. And recent research
suggests that the algorithms behind facial-recognition technology may
perform worse on precisely this demographic. Facial-recognition
systems are more likely either to misidentify or fail to identify
African Americans than other races, errors that could result in innocent
citizens being marked as suspects in crimes. And though this technology
is being rolled out by law enforcement across the country, little is
being done to explore—or correct—for the bias."
"In 16 'undisclosed locations' across northern Los Angeles, digital eyes watch the public. These aren’t ordinary police-surveillance cameras; these cameras are looking at your face. Using facial-recognition software, the cameras can recognize individuals from up to 600 feet away. The faces they collect are then compared, in real-time, against 'hot lists' of people suspected of gang activity or having an open arrest warrant.
Dangerous Associations: Joint Enterprise, Gangs and Racism
This
study examines the processes of criminalisation that contribute to
unequal outcomes for young Black, Asian and Minority ethnic people. It
has been written by Patrick Williams and Becky Clarke of Manchester
Metropolitan University.
The research draws on a survey of nearly 250 serving prisoners convicted under joint enterprise provisions. It tracks the complex process of criminalisation through which black and minority ethnic people are unfairly identified by the police as members of dangerous gangs.
More than three-quarters of the black and minority ethnic prisoners reported that the prosecution claimed that they were members of a ‘gang’, compared to only 39 percent of white prisoners. This apparent ‘gang’ affiliation’ is used to secure convictions, under joint enterprise provisions, for offences they have not committed.
The report also discusses police gang databases in Manchester, London and Nottingham, which claim to record gang association. These lists include people who ‘have no proven convictions and… those who have been assessed by criminal justice professionals as posing minimal risk’. They are also dominated by black and minority ethnic people, as a result of racial stereotyping.
- See more at: http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/dangerous-associations-joint-enterprise-gangs-and-racism#sthash.8UYsSg0H.dpuf
The research draws on a survey of nearly 250 serving prisoners convicted under joint enterprise provisions. It tracks the complex process of criminalisation through which black and minority ethnic people are unfairly identified by the police as members of dangerous gangs.
More than three-quarters of the black and minority ethnic prisoners reported that the prosecution claimed that they were members of a ‘gang’, compared to only 39 percent of white prisoners. This apparent ‘gang’ affiliation’ is used to secure convictions, under joint enterprise provisions, for offences they have not committed.
The report also discusses police gang databases in Manchester, London and Nottingham, which claim to record gang association. These lists include people who ‘have no proven convictions and… those who have been assessed by criminal justice professionals as posing minimal risk’. They are also dominated by black and minority ethnic people, as a result of racial stereotyping.
- See more at: http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/dangerous-associations-joint-enterprise-gangs-and-racism#sthash.8UYsSg0H.dpuf
"This study examines the processes of
criminalisation that contribute to unequal outcomes for young Black, Asian and
Minority ethnic people. It has been written by Patrick Williams and Becky
Clarke of Manchester Metropolitan University.
The research draws on a survey of
nearly 250 serving prisoners convicted under joint enterprise provisions. It
tracks the complex process of criminalisation through which black and minority
ethnic people are unfairly identified by the police as members of dangerous
gangs.
More than three-quarters of the
black and minority ethnic prisoners reported that the prosecution claimed that
they were members of a ‘gang’, compared to only 39 percent of white prisoners.
This apparent ‘gang’ affiliation’ is used to secure convictions, under joint
enterprise provisions, for offences they have not committed.
The report also discusses police
gang databases in Manchester, London and Nottingham, which claim to record gang
association. These lists include people who ‘have no proven convictions and…
those who have been assessed by criminal justice professionals as posing
minimal risk’. They are also dominated by black and minority ethnic people, as
a result of racial stereotyping."
View the Report
This
study examines the processes of criminalisation that contribute to
unequal outcomes for young Black, Asian and Minority ethnic people. It
has been written by Patrick Williams and Becky Clarke of Manchester
Metropolitan University.
The research draws on a survey of nearly 250 serving prisoners convicted under joint enterprise provisions. It tracks the complex process of criminalisation through which black and minority ethnic people are unfairly identified by the police as members of dangerous gangs.
More than three-quarters of the black and minority ethnic prisoners reported that the prosecution claimed that they were members of a ‘gang’, compared to only 39 percent of white prisoners. This apparent ‘gang’ affiliation’ is used to secure convictions, under joint enterprise provisions, for offences they have not committed.
The report also discusses police gang databases in Manchester, London and Nottingham, which claim to record gang association. These lists include people who ‘have no proven convictions and… those who have been assessed by criminal justice professionals as posing minimal risk’. They are also dominated by black and minority ethnic people, as a result of racial stereotyping.
- See more at: http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/dangerous-associations-joint-enterprise-gangs-and-racism#sthash.8UYsSg0H.dpuf
The research draws on a survey of nearly 250 serving prisoners convicted under joint enterprise provisions. It tracks the complex process of criminalisation through which black and minority ethnic people are unfairly identified by the police as members of dangerous gangs.
More than three-quarters of the black and minority ethnic prisoners reported that the prosecution claimed that they were members of a ‘gang’, compared to only 39 percent of white prisoners. This apparent ‘gang’ affiliation’ is used to secure convictions, under joint enterprise provisions, for offences they have not committed.
The report also discusses police gang databases in Manchester, London and Nottingham, which claim to record gang association. These lists include people who ‘have no proven convictions and… those who have been assessed by criminal justice professionals as posing minimal risk’. They are also dominated by black and minority ethnic people, as a result of racial stereotyping.
- See more at: http://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/publications/dangerous-associations-joint-enterprise-gangs-and-racism#sthash.8UYsSg0H.dpuf
Your Brain, Race, and Criminal Justice
"Researchers have used pictures of faces like these to study something called implicit bias. University of Washington psychologist Anthony G. Greenwald aNd his colleagues devised an "implicit association test" or IAT - in which people are instructed to match words and pictures that represent concepts, and response time and accuracy are used as indicators of the strength of the association between these concepts. this test is based on the premise that it is less mentally taxing to match concepts that are closely related in our minds (e.g., names of flowers like 'tulip' and pleasant-meaning words like 'happy'). People respond faster and more accurately when pairing concepts that are automatically associated. Racial bias has been measured in this way, and the test results show that participants are faster at pairing positive words with white faces than they are at pairing positive words with black faces. The converse is true with negative words. It turns out, most Americans - regardless of their own racial group - exhibit unconscious pro-white, anti-black attitudes on the IAT."
Related Document: State of the Science: Implicit Bias Review 2014
"Researchers have used pictures of faces like these to study something called implicit bias. University of Washington psychologist Anthony G. Greenwald aNd his colleagues devised an "implicit association test" or IAT - in which people are instructed to match words and pictures that represent concepts, and response time and accuracy are used as indicators of the strength of the association between these concepts. this test is based on the premise that it is less mentally taxing to match concepts that are closely related in our minds (e.g., names of flowers like 'tulip' and pleasant-meaning words like 'happy'). People respond faster and more accurately when pairing concepts that are automatically associated. Racial bias has been measured in this way, and the test results show that participants are faster at pairing positive words with white faces than they are at pairing positive words with black faces. The converse is true with negative words. It turns out, most Americans - regardless of their own racial group - exhibit unconscious pro-white, anti-black attitudes on the IAT."
Related Document: State of the Science: Implicit Bias Review 2014
How Our Brains Perceive Race
“'You’re not, like, a total racist bastard,'” David Amodio tells me. He pauses. 'Today.'
I’m sitting in the soft-spoken cognitive neuroscientist’s spotless office nestled within New York University’s psychology department, but it feels like I’m at the doctor’s, getting a dreaded diagnosis. On his giant monitor, Amodio shows me a big blob of data, a cluster of points depicting where people score on the Implicit Association Test. The test measures racial prejudices that we cannot consciously control. I’ve taken it three times now. This time around my uncontrolled prejudice, while clearly present, has come in significantly below the average for white people like me.
That certainly beats the first time I took the IAT online, on the website UnderstandingPrejudice.org. That time, my results showed a 'strong automatic preference' for European Americans over African-Americans. That was not a good thing to hear, but it’s extremely common — 51 percent of online test takers show moderate to strong bias."
“'You’re not, like, a total racist bastard,'” David Amodio tells me. He pauses. 'Today.'
I’m sitting in the soft-spoken cognitive neuroscientist’s spotless office nestled within New York University’s psychology department, but it feels like I’m at the doctor’s, getting a dreaded diagnosis. On his giant monitor, Amodio shows me a big blob of data, a cluster of points depicting where people score on the Implicit Association Test. The test measures racial prejudices that we cannot consciously control. I’ve taken it three times now. This time around my uncontrolled prejudice, while clearly present, has come in significantly below the average for white people like me.
You think of yourself as a person who strives to be unprejudiced, but you can’t control these split-second reactions.
That certainly beats the first time I took the IAT online, on the website UnderstandingPrejudice.org. That time, my results showed a 'strong automatic preference' for European Americans over African-Americans. That was not a good thing to hear, but it’s extremely common — 51 percent of online test takers show moderate to strong bias."
Prisons
Women Inmates On The Rise
The number of women in federal prisons could go up with the abolition of early parole provisions by the federal government, according to a University of Toronto criminology professor.
The number and proportion of female inmates had been increasing in both provincial and federal prisons even before the parole changes.....
And with the end of the federal accelerated parole system, the numbers could go even higher, says Kelly Hannah-Moffat, a professor and director of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at U of T.
Beyond Youth Custody. Resettlement Of Girls And Young Women: Research Report
This report addresses a worrying gap in the knowledge about the effective resettlement of girls and young women. Reviewing research literature in a number of relevant areas, it cross-references evidence of what works in the resettlement of young people with what we know about the wider need of girls and young women. This iterative synthesis approach thus provides a gender-sensitive approach to inform policy and practice development in resettlement for this specific group.
In New York's Largest Jail, Teens Face "Brute Force" And Intimidation That Horrifies Even Prosecutors
In the second-largest jail in the nation, teens are beaten more frequently than not. They are placed in solitary confinement for disciplinary infractions that would be considered typical adolescent behavior outside of jail. And inmates, medical staff, and even teachers, are intimidated out of reporting violence by corrections officers, according to a scathing new Department of Justice report.
Read the Dept. of Justice Report
This New Jersey Reform Stops Judges From Jailing Some Defendants Just Because They Are Poor
In New Jersey, inmates spend an average of ten months behind bars just waiting to go to trial. Many have the option to post bail. But a study last year found that some 40 percent of those in pretrial detention would have been released had they been able to afford bail.
On Monday, the New Jersey legislature passed a package of bills to remove financial need from bail determinations, with the strong support of Gov. Chris Christie (R).
Holder: Data-Driven Prison Sentencing "Unfair" To Minorities
Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday expressed concern about the fairness of judges who rely on big data to sentence criminal defendants, saying the use of such “risk assessments” in several states could exacerbate racial disparities among the prison population.
Holder, who made the comments during a Philadelphia speech to criminal defense lawyers, said the use of such data results in unfair treatment of minorities.
New support for released prisoners in south Etobicoke http://t.co/PhFp5k54Yn via @torontostar
— Crim Library UTL (@CrimLib) August 4, 2014
Women Inmates On The Rise
The number of women in federal prisons could go up with the abolition of early parole provisions by the federal government, according to a University of Toronto criminology professor.
The number and proportion of female inmates had been increasing in both provincial and federal prisons even before the parole changes.....
And with the end of the federal accelerated parole system, the numbers could go even higher, says Kelly Hannah-Moffat, a professor and director of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at U of T.
Beyond Youth Custody. Resettlement Of Girls And Young Women: Research Report
This report addresses a worrying gap in the knowledge about the effective resettlement of girls and young women. Reviewing research literature in a number of relevant areas, it cross-references evidence of what works in the resettlement of young people with what we know about the wider need of girls and young women. This iterative synthesis approach thus provides a gender-sensitive approach to inform policy and practice development in resettlement for this specific group.
In New York's Largest Jail, Teens Face "Brute Force" And Intimidation That Horrifies Even Prosecutors
In the second-largest jail in the nation, teens are beaten more frequently than not. They are placed in solitary confinement for disciplinary infractions that would be considered typical adolescent behavior outside of jail. And inmates, medical staff, and even teachers, are intimidated out of reporting violence by corrections officers, according to a scathing new Department of Justice report.
Read the Dept. of Justice Report
This New Jersey Reform Stops Judges From Jailing Some Defendants Just Because They Are Poor
In New Jersey, inmates spend an average of ten months behind bars just waiting to go to trial. Many have the option to post bail. But a study last year found that some 40 percent of those in pretrial detention would have been released had they been able to afford bail.
On Monday, the New Jersey legislature passed a package of bills to remove financial need from bail determinations, with the strong support of Gov. Chris Christie (R).
Holder: Data-Driven Prison Sentencing "Unfair" To Minorities
Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday expressed concern about the fairness of judges who rely on big data to sentence criminal defendants, saying the use of such “risk assessments” in several states could exacerbate racial disparities among the prison population.
Holder, who made the comments during a Philadelphia speech to criminal defense lawyers, said the use of such data results in unfair treatment of minorities.
STUDY: Economic Hardship Makes People More Racially Biased
The economic collapse of the late 2000s hurt most Americans—but not equally. In fact, according to a 2011 Pew study
(visualized above), while median household wealth dropped by 16 percent
for white Americans, it dropped a stunning 53 percent for
African-Americans.
What accounts for this dramatic disparity? Traditional explanations tend to focus on structural economic factors, such as the fact that African American families had a higher proportion of their total wealth tied up in the vulnerable housing market, and that they were targeted by predatory lenders. But according to a new paper just out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that may not be the full explanation. It looks as though a more subtle form of racial bias may have played a role as well—thanks to psychological factors that, in a recession, tend to make those biases worse.
The new study is by Amy Krosch and David Amodio of New York University. Amodio in particular has extensively studied what are called "implicit" racial biases: Uncontrolled prejudices that manifest themselves in our split-second reactions to images or in other cognitive tests. According to one estimate, for instance, 75 percent of whites harbor these subtle, subconscious biases in favor of other whites, and against blacks.
Read on...
What accounts for this dramatic disparity? Traditional explanations tend to focus on structural economic factors, such as the fact that African American families had a higher proportion of their total wealth tied up in the vulnerable housing market, and that they were targeted by predatory lenders. But according to a new paper just out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that may not be the full explanation. It looks as though a more subtle form of racial bias may have played a role as well—thanks to psychological factors that, in a recession, tend to make those biases worse.
The new study is by Amy Krosch and David Amodio of New York University. Amodio in particular has extensively studied what are called "implicit" racial biases: Uncontrolled prejudices that manifest themselves in our split-second reactions to images or in other cognitive tests. According to one estimate, for instance, 75 percent of whites harbor these subtle, subconscious biases in favor of other whites, and against blacks.
Read on...
STUDY: Juvenile Arrests in Oakland Driven By Racial Bias
A new study released Wednesday finds that African-American boys in
Oakland, California, are far more likely to be arrested than boys of
other races. They are also more likely to be arrested for minor offenses
like gambling and drunkenness.
According to the study, conducted by the Black Organizing Project in conjunction with the ACLU, black boys comprised of 73.5 percent of all juvenile arrests by the Oakland Police Department between 2006 and 2012, even though they only make up 29.3 percent of the city’s youth population. Nearly 80 percent of these young African Americans were not prosecuted.
As Jacquelyn Byers, director of the Black Organizing Project, told the San Francisco Chronicle, “we’ve heard stories about racial profiling — when you see the actual data, it’s hard to believe this is actually happening.”
Read on...
According to the study, conducted by the Black Organizing Project in conjunction with the ACLU, black boys comprised of 73.5 percent of all juvenile arrests by the Oakland Police Department between 2006 and 2012, even though they only make up 29.3 percent of the city’s youth population. Nearly 80 percent of these young African Americans were not prosecuted.
As Jacquelyn Byers, director of the Black Organizing Project, told the San Francisco Chronicle, “we’ve heard stories about racial profiling — when you see the actual data, it’s hard to believe this is actually happening.”
Read on...
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