Predicting Bad Policing: Theorizing Burdensome and Racially Disparate Policing through the Lenses of Social Psychology and Routine Activities

• DOI: 10.1177/0002716220901349
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Author: Phillip Atiba Goff,Hilary Rau
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Subject Matter: Patterns of Fatal Police Shootings

ANNALS, AAPSS, 687, January 2020 67

DOI: 10.1177/0002716220901349

Predicting Bad

Policing:

Theorizing

Burdensome

and Racially

Disparate

Policing

through the

Lenses of Social

Psychology and

Routine

Activities

By

PHILLIP ATIBA GOFF

and

HILARY RAU

901349ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYPREDICTING BAD POLICING

research-article2020

Despite an increase in research relating to racial dis-

parities in policing—particularly in the area of deadly

force—there have been comparatively few attempts to

theorize which factors predict disparate policing. We

fill this gap by combining routine activity theory from

criminology with situationist approaches to discrimina-

tion from social psychology. We propose that disparate

policing is most likely to occur when officers who are

vulnerable to situational risk factors for bias encounter

citizens who are members of vulnerable out-groups.

We argue that situational risk factors for bias and

aggression among police provoke feelings of threat and

motivate self-protection and/or feelings of disgust and

out-group derogation. We present social psychological

laboratory research and, where available, field research

specific to policing as a way of exploring and bolstering

the proposed framework. This work supports an agenda

for future scientific research that may assist practition-

ers in identifying likely opportunities for reform even as

we await further field research that tests these hypoth-

esized parameters.

Keywords: routine activities theory; policing; racial

bias; social psychology

Nearly everyone with access to a television

or social media has seen cell phone videos

of black people dying at the hands of police

officers over the past five years. Walter Scott.

Tamir Rice. Philando Castille. Gut-wrenching

videos have brought new attention to old prob-

lems of race in policing. Yet despite the result-

ant national appetite to understand issues of

Phillip Atiba Goff is the inaugural Franklin A. Thomas

Professor in Policing Equity at John Jay College of

Criminal Justice and the cofounder and president of

the Center for Policing Equity. His work focuses on the

predictors of discrimination, particularly in policing.

Hilary Rau is a legal research scholar at the Center for

Policing Equity, where her work focuses on police

policy and regulation.

Correspondence: goff@policingequity.org

68 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

race and policing—and the increase in research findings around police miscon-

duct and racial disparities in police behaviors (Braga and Weisburd 2015; Fagan

etal. 2010)—there have been few attempts to provide a theoretical framework

for predicting policing that is racially disparate or that unnecessarily infringes on

human dignity and autonomy (see Worden 2015).

According to a recent consensus report from the National Academy of

Sciences, factors that predict aggressive, intrusive, and biased policing are among

the least studied issues in the field of policing, despite being among the most

urgent (National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine 2018). In the

absence of coherent academic explanations, two theories have come to dominate

popular culture and most academic research on the topic: that police are driven

by bigotry or that statistical discrimination may account for a disproportionate

amount of these disparities. There are reasons to suspect, however, that these

theories are insufficient to explain the patterns of disparities observed in policing

outcomes. Even a casual review of both the literature on race in policing and the

social science literatures on what causes discrimination suggests that a more

nuanced theoretical framing is necessary to predict the situations in which dispa-

rate outcomes proliferate.

The purpose of this article is to articulate a more robust theoretical framework

for burdensome and disparate policing. We do this by combining existing crimi-

nological and social psychological literatures: specifically, we exploit the existing

literatures on routine activity theory (RAT) in criminology (Cohen and Felson

1979) and situationist approaches to discrimination in social psychology (Dovidio

2001; Ross and Nisbett 2011) to frame predictions about when the risk of bur-

densome and racially disparate policing is likely to be greatest. Our goal is to

articulate a theoretical framing that sets forth an agenda for future scientific

research. This agenda may also be useful to practitioners seeking to identify likely

opportunities for reform while that research is in progress.

Theorizing Burdensome and Disparate Police Behavior

While there have been few attempts to theorize what predicts burdensome and

racially disparate police behavior, criminologists have theorized extensively about

what predicts civilian criminal behavior. RAT, one of the most cited theories in

criminology, holds that crimes are most likely to occur when a likely offender and

a suitable target converge in time and space in the absence of a capable guardian

(Cohen and Felson 1979). The absence of any of these three conditions is typi-

cally sufficient to deter crime (Felson 1987; Cohen and Felson 1979). For

instance, RAT would predict that an assault is more likely to occur in a dark alley

than in the middle of a crowded grocery store, that homes are more likely to be

burglarized when no one is home, and that a computer is more likely to be

hacked if it lacks a firewall.

Although RAT has been cited in thousands of articles over the last 40 years, it

has rarely (if ever) been used to provide a theoretical frame for burdensome or