Implicit Bias Trainings: The Future or a Failure?

• Author: Gray, Moira
• Position: Intern Edition

Following the racial tension and protests of 2020, many municipalities are seeking ways to display their commitment towards racial equality and equity. Law enforcement agencies must prove to their constituents that they are fighting against racism, both structurally and with accountability for individuals. The conversation on improving our criminal justice seems to always circle back to one thing: implicit biases. As the nation grapples with its complicated history and current strife, implicit bias training is what most turns to as a solution.

WHAT IS IMPLICIT BIAS?

The concept of implicit (also called unconscious) bias first came into American nomenclature in the 1990s, as two psychologists proposed the theory of implicit social cognition. This theory states that a large majority of a person's actions are influenced by implicit biases and association. Implicit biases cannot be controlled: they are unconscious mental operations done without conscious thought. Implicit biases must be discovered. For example, one of the psychologists who coined the term implicit bias (Mahzarin Banaji) was tasked with using computer keys to quickly categorize words and pictures: dark-skinned faces with negative words, and light skin with positive words. However, when the test then asked her to categorize the opposite (light-skinned faces with negative words and dark-skinned faces with positive words) she found it more difficult and took more time.1 This revealed to Banaji that she had an implicit bias towards light-skinned faces. Thus, the implicit association test (IAT) was born.

THE EFFECTS OF IMPLICIT BIAS ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE

There is no doubt that understanding our biases, both unconscious and conscious, is important to promoting racial justice in the law enforcement arena. Stereotypes can cause officers to see black people as more of a threat than their white counterparts.2,3 Even the field of prosecution is not immune. According to the United States Sentencing Commission, black male offenders receive 19.1% longer sentences than similarly situated white male offenders,4 even when controlling for criminal history and other demographic differences. Although African Americans are only 14% of the population, they were 24% of the fatal shootings by police from 2015 to 2021. (5) While all prosecutors agree that all victims deserve justice and that justice should be applied equally regardless of race, this is not the reality of what happens. (6) Unconscious...