Precinct or Prejudice? Understanding Racial Disparities in New York City's Stop-and-Frisk Policy

Sharad Goel, Justin M. Rao, Ravi Shroff

In Brief:

• Stop-and-frisk is a controversial policing tactic where police officers stop and detain residents in an effort to recover drugs, weapons, and contraband.
• The majority of stop-and-frisks performed on New York City residents who are suspected of carrying a weapon actually have a low probability of producing a weapon, given the features that officers knew prior to the stop.
• Controlling for the location of the stop, stop-and-frisks exhibit racial disparities in their probabilities of turning up a weapon.
• The authors contextualize these results in the cases of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.