Influenced racial profiling research.
From Dr. Withrow | July 19, 2008
Over the past few years I have spent a lot of time in courtrooms listening to attorneys argue that police stop data either do or do not prove the existence of racial profiling. Fact is, none of the more than 500 studies conducted nationwide over the past decade are able to definitively prove or disprove the existence of racial profiling. There is no universally acceptable method for estimating the driving population by race or ethnicity. The studies do not account for how police officer allocation may affect who gets stopped, and how often. And, nobody has been able to effectively determine whether police officers actually know the race or ethnicity of the driver prior to the stop. It seems to me that unless and until we solve these methodological problems, racial profiling research will continue to be overly influenced by conjecture and opinion.
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