Welcome to the Policing Racial Bias Project

We convened our initial conference on September 23 & 24, 2004. Over 160 researchers and agency representatives registered for the conference. Law enforcement officials from 34 agencies (across 13 states) participated.

The second conference has not yet been scheduled, but further details will be posted on this site

In the meantime, we invite the involvement of additional law enforcement agencies and pscyhology researchers in a variety of capacities. Please contact us if you would like to receive updates about policing-related research in psychology, if your agency might like to potentially collaborate with researchers in scientific studies, or if you would like to nominate a law enforcement program that has a particularly effective approach to combatting racial bias in policing. Thank you!

The primary goal of the Policing Racial Bias project is to develop partnerships among social psychologists and law enforcement agencies to share information and generate new knowledge on the influence of racial bias in policing.

This project offers a unique structure under which researchers and law enforcement agencies can work together to proactively address some of the race issues that plague us all.

The project is designed to answer questions about racial bias in the policing context. There is a great deal of concern and discussion about the topic. However, law enforcement agencies remain unclear about why, how, or when race might influence policing decisions.

The primary methods of addressing racial issues in policing thus far have been to collect race data on traffic stops and searches and to require sensitivity training for patrol staff. While they provide us with some valuable information, these approaches leave us with many unanswered questions: Under what situations might race unintentionally influence patrol officers' decision-making? How can we examine and isolate unintentional racial bias in the policing context? What types of police training would be most effective in reducing racial bias?

We also have questions about how the public reads encounters with police. What causes people in the community to believe that the actions of police officers are motivated by race? What steps can be taken to change negative perceptions of the police?

For decades, social psychologists have been designing empirical studies to systematically examine racial bias. The vast majority of these studies employ ordinary civilians as study participants with the goal of understanding how factors in the cultural or situational environment can lead individuals to develop bias. In many of these studies, researchers have tested strategies for reducing racial bias as well.

Over the last several years, however, there has been an increasing interest among social psychologists to study racial bias in the specific context of policing. Understanding the conditions under which unintentional racial bias operates in this context could have important implications and may lead to significant interventions in policy, supervision, and training to reduce its influence.

Despite their obvious relevance to law enforcement, many social psychological research findings on racial bias have never been shared directly with law enforcement agencies. A primary benefit of participating in the Policing Racial Bias project is that many agencies will be involved in cutting-edge social psychological research designed to answer many of the unresolved questions above. Additionally, these agencies will be in a position to proactively address racial issues in their own communities by participating in ongoing research.

please email policingproject@psych.stanford.edu