Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship. By Charles Epp, Steven Maynard‐Moody, and Donald Haider Markel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 272 pp. 25.00 paperback.

• Published date: 01 March 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12128
• Date: 01 March 2015

Book Reviews

Jinee Lokaneeta, Editor

Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship.By

Charles Epp, Steven Maynard-Moody, and Donald Haider

Markel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 272 pp.

25.00 paperback.

Reviewed by Mario L. Barnes, School of Law, University of California,

Irvine

It is rare to read a new book that makes important contributions to

multiple fields and literatures. It is rarer still when the book

addresses the interrelation of race, perceived criminality, and

policing—historically fraught affiliations that remain so despite

being extensively explored within law and social science research.

In Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship, the

authors make these important contributions. In the narrowest

sense, the book analyzes a survey of over 2300 motorists about

their experiences with traffic stops in the Kansas City Metropolitan

area. The findings, however, do much more. They differentiate

between stops where race does or does not provide the basis for

the encounter and in so doing, utilize methods that are attendant

to both critical and sociolegal approaches. As a result, the text

offers crucial insights into how “race shapes and is shaped by police

stops in often hidden and subtle but profound and foundational

ways” (p. xvi).

The book importantly illustrates that police stops work differ-

ently depending on the justification for the stop. There are traffic

safety stops, which officers identify as premised on “must-stop” vio-

lations (p. 60), and there are investigatory stops, which are used to

address low-level violations. In assessing the likelihood of a driver

being stopped, the researchers assessed stops for excessive speeding

(one type of traffic safety stop), traffic safety stops more generally,

and investigatory stops. Across these stops, they evaluated a number

of characteristics of the drivers and vehicles driven. These charac-

teristics included whether drivers were African American, gender,

age, vehicle value, vehicle type (luxury cars), and vehicle damage.

The research revealed that African Americans are much less likely

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Law & Society Review, Volume49, Number 1 (2015)

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