The North Carolina Highway Traffic Study

By Smith, William R.

Book Id: WPLBN0000695888
Format Type: PDF eBook
File Size:
Reproduction Date: 2005

Title:	The North Carolina Highway Traffic Study
Author:	Smith, William R.
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Law., Law & economy, Litigation and arbitration
Collections:	Law Library Collection
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	Department of Justice


Citation APA MLA Chicago Smith, W. R. (n.d.). The North Carolina Highway Traffic Study. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.us/

Description
Legal Reference Publication

Excerpt
Project Overview: The North Carolina Highway Traffic Study is a multi-method investigation of the phenomenon popularly referred to as ?driving while black,? or more generically as ?racial profiling? and ?racial targeting.? There is widespread belief that African Americans and other minorities are at increased risk of police stops compared to white drivers. A 1999 Gallup Poll, for example, found that 56 percent of whites and 77 percent of African Americans believed that racial profiling exists (Newport 1999). In our own survey of adult, North Carolina-licensed drivers, 30 percent of whites and 80 percent of African Americans reported that they believed that African Americans were more likely than other drivers to be pulled over by the police. ?Racial profiling? and ?racial targeting? refer to a fairly specific police practice of using race as an explicit criterion for deciding which cars to stop or search. ?Driving while black? is a less focused term, but summarizes a widespread belief in minority communities that they are singled out for harsher treatment than are white drivers.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Project Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Official Records (Citations, Written Warnings, Searches, Stops) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Survey of North Carolina Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Citizen Focus Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 North Carolina State Highway Patrol Focus Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Chapter 1: ?Driving While Black? and the North Carolina Highway Study . . . . . . . . . 23 The Work of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 The Importance of Process and Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Non-Bias Mechanisms that Could Produce Racial Disparity in Stops . . . . . . . . 37 Deployment and Patrol Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 References for Chapter One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Chapter 2: The North Carolina State Highway Patrol Data Bases and Evidence of Racial Disparity at the Aggregate Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Racial Disparity in Geographic Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Theories of Racial Disparity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Methodological Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 The Importance of Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Citation Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Spatial Heterogeneity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Proxy Measures of Citizen Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Command Policy and Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Aggregation Units of Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Stops, Citations and Written Warnings by Race. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Racial Disparity in Districts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Proxy Measures of Citizen Driving Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Spatial Heterogeneity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Day and Night Rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 What Are the Mechanisms that Generate Positives (and Negatives)? . . . . . . . . 107 Citation Zones as a Causal Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 References for Chapter Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Chapter 3: Racial Disparity at the Individual Trooper Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Goals of Individual Trooper Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Individual Level Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Measuring the Context of the Officer?s Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Identification of Troop Districts with Troopers as Statistical Outliers . . . . . . . 138 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 References for Chapter Three . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 i