New Study Suggests Police Stop Minorities at Moderately Higher Rates Than Whites

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The Stanford Policing Project is a massive effort to collect data on police stops nationwide. It’s basically an attempt to find out whether police unfairly stop and search blacks and Hispanics at greater rates than whites, and they’ve now released the data they have so far.

What they find is that police stop Hispanics at about the same rate as whites, but stop blacks at a somewhat higher rate. Once stopped, both groups are ticketed, searched, and arrested at significantly higher rates than whites. But is this because of racial discrimination? The Stanford researchers used two different tests to find out.

First up is what’s called an “outcome test.” If, say, police search blacks at twice the rate of whites, but also find contraband at twice the rate, it suggests there’s no bias in who they choose to search. They’re using a roughly equal standard of suspicion for both. Here are the results of that test. Note that the dashed black line represents white searches, while the dashed red line is my eyeball guess at the difference for blacks and Hispanics:

Although police search blacks more often than they search whites, they find contraband at about the same rate. They appear to be using similar criteria for both. However, they find contraband at a lower rate in searches of Hispanic drivers. This suggests they’re using a tougher standard of suspicion against Hispanics.

But that’s not all. There’s also something called a “threshold test.” This is a more direct measure of the standard police use to search drivers they stop. Here are the results:

When this more sensitive test of outcomes is applied, it shows that the threshold for a search is lower for both blacks and Hispanics. Very roughly speaking, it appears that police need about a third less suspicion to search black and Hispanic drivers compared to white drivers.

I’m not sure how this compares to previous studies. My initial sense is that it’s less than I would have guessed. Overall, police do stop and search black and Hispanic drivers at unfairly high rates, but not at enormously higher rates—although it’s obvious that in certain communities the stop rate of minority drivers is far, far higher and the standard of suspicion is far, far lower than it is for white drivers:

 We’ll certainly find out more about this in the future, since the Stanford researchers have placed their massive database online and made it available to anyone who wants to dive more deeply into the data. They also continue to collect information from police departments around the country.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate