Image: Michael Fleshman on Flickr with CC BY-SA 2.0 license

Policing is used to enforce laws and maintain order in the community; however, it has been said to have its flaws due to racial disparities. This lesson will be going into policing, more specifically racial profiling, policing in black communities and police trainings. For racial profiling, we will go into depth about what racial profiling is and who gets affected by it the most. Then we will talk about the history of policing and how different it is for black communities. There will then be a discussion about police and the training that they have and lack as well.

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• Brunson, R.K. and Miller, J. (2006). Young black men and urban policing in the United States. British Journal of Criminology, 46(4): 613-640.
• Fridell, L. & Lim, H. (2016). Assessing the racial aspects of police force using the implicit- and counterbias perspectives. Journal of Criminal Justice, 44: 36-48.
• Harris, R.N. (1973). Police Academy – An Inside View. John Wiley and Sons.
• Legewie, J. (2016). Racial profiling and use of force in police stops: How local events trigger periods of increased discrimination. American Journal of Sociology, 122(2), 379-424.
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1. How has the “War on Terror” affected racial profiling?
2. How have policies after 9/11 supported racial profiling?
3. What kind of training do police get on “profiling” in the academy?
4. How has racial profiling contributed to mass incarceration?
5. How does policing in black communities differ from policing in white communities?
6. How does implicit bias differ from counter bias? How does it impact policing?
7. What trainings can be added to police training to reduce implicit bias?