Using hit rate tests to test for racial bias in law enforcement
Subtitle: vehicle searches in Wichita
By: Nicola Persico, Petra Todd.
Contributors: Todd, Petra.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series ;; working paper 10947; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) ;; working paper no. 10947.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Racial profiling in law enforcement -- Kansas -- Wichita.
Description: "This paper considers the use of outcomes-based tests for detecting racial bias in the context of police searches of motor vehicles.  It shows that the test proposed in Knowles, Persico and Todd (2001) can also be applied in a more general environment where police officers are heterogenous in their tastes for discrimination and in their costs of search and motorists are heterogeneous in their benefits and costs from criminal behavior.  We characterize the police and motorist decision problems in a game theoretic framework and establish properties of the equilibrium.  We also extend the model to the case where drivers' characteristics are mutable in the sense that drivers can adapt some of their characteristics to reduce the probability of being monitored.  After developing the theory that justifies the application of outcomes-based tests, we apply the tests to data on police searches of motor vehicles gathered by the Wichita Police department.  The empirical findings are consistent with the notion that police in Wichita choose their search strategies to maximize successful searches, and not out of racial bias"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Title from PDF file as viewed on 1/12/2005.
Also available in print.
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Mode of access: World Wide Web.