SOC 3750 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Robert Wilkins, Maryland State Police, Visible Minority

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 3750
• Professor: Patrick Parnaby

Document Summary

Intensified surveillance, without probable cause, on the basis of race. Racial profiling begins before the police make contact begins at surveillance level. Officers uses race (i. e. , not behaviour) as grounds for suspicion/surveillance (i. e. they"ll say that they were watching and suspicious based on their behaviour. Under pressure, us police departments began collecting traffic stop data (including race) Scholars used existing data or collected their own. Early studies compared stop rate to census data (45% of hispanic stopped, vs. only 8% of. The study needed to see if it was police, or if at that given time, hispanic drivers were just poor behind the wheel. Teams observed and recorded racial composition of drivers, record infraction rate by race. Lamberth (1997) found blacks were stopped at rates above observed infraction rate in maryland but no statistical evidence conclusion. Racial profiling: traffic stops and searches in the usa. Data re: searches of vehicle and person tell a different story.