Measuring racial disparities in traffic ticketing within large urban jurisdictions
By: DUNN, Ronnie A
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ArticlePublisher: Armonk, NY : M.E. Sharpe, June 2009Public Performance & Management Review 32, 4, p. 537-561Abstract: As racial profiling has emerged as one of the most contentious and persistent issues confronting law enforcement and public officials across the nation in the last 20 years, research in this area has evolved rapidly. Although an increasing number of studies have been conducted on racial profiling in traffic enforcement, scholars have not reached a consensus on how best to estimate the driving population to compare with racial traffic ticketing data from a jurisdiction. This study combines traffic flow data for the city of Cleveland with residential census data to estimate the city's driving population. This provides a more precise estimate of the driving population than estimates obtained from traffic flow and census data used separately, as in earlier studies. This study finds that although blacks are a majority of city residents, they are not the majority of the driving population, yet are more likely to be ticketed than whites.
As racial profiling has emerged as one of the most contentious and persistent issues confronting law enforcement and public officials across the nation in the last 20 years, research in this area has evolved rapidly. Although an increasing number of studies have been conducted on racial profiling in traffic enforcement, scholars have not reached a consensus on how best to estimate the driving population to compare with racial traffic ticketing data from a jurisdiction. This study combines traffic flow data for the city of Cleveland with residential census data to estimate the city's driving population. This provides a more precise estimate of the driving population than estimates obtained from traffic flow and census data used separately, as in earlier studies. This study finds that although blacks are a majority of city residents, they are not the majority of the driving population, yet are more likely to be ticketed than whites.
policing, public safety, racial profiling, social equity, traffic enforcement
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