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Cited by 89Policing Practices and PerceptionsCriminal Justice and Corrections AnalysisEducation Discipline and Inequality

Officer bias, over-patrolling and ethnic disparities in stop and search

Vomfell, Lara, Stewart, Neil·2021·Nature Human Behaviour
DOI 10.1038/s41562-020-01029-w
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Abstract

Black and Asian people in the United Kingdom are more likely to be stopped and searched by police than White people. Following a panel of 36,000 searches by 1,100 police officers at a major English police force, we provide officer-specific measures of over-searching relative to two baselines: the ethnic composition of crime suspects officers interact with and the ethnic composition of the areas they patrol. We show that the vast majority of officers over-search ethnic minorities against both baselines. But we also find that the over-searching by individual officers cannot account for all of the over-representation of ethnic minorities in stop and search: over-patrolling of minority areas is also a key factor. Decomposing the overall search bias, we find that the over-representation of Asian people in stop and search is primarily accounted for by over-patrolling, while the over-representation of Black people is a combination of officer and patrol effects, with the larger contribution coming from biases of officers.

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  • Police officers may perceive a higher base rate for finding drugs when they stop and search black male teenagers.

    “For example, police officers may perceive a higher base rate for finding drugs when they stop and search black male teenagers (Vomfell & Stewart, 2012).”

    From Biased and biasing: the hidden bias cascade and bias snowball effects (2025) · cites this paper as Vomfell & Stewart, 2012

    The Introduction (p. 3) says police frequently attribute the over-representation of ethnic minorities in searches to their presumed greater involvement in crime, which partly supports a claim about officers’ perceptions. It does not say officers perceive a higher likelihood of finding drugs specifically when searching Black male teenagers; the Introduction (p. 5) lists drugs only as one of several possible objects of a search. (LLM, conf=0.78)

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Research works printed but not linked: 46

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Authors
Vomfell, L., & Stewart, N.
Affiliations
University of Warwick (GB)
Corresponding author
Vomfell, Lara
ORCID
Venue
Nature Human Behaviour
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2021-01-18
Volume
5
Issue
5
Pages
566-575
ISSN
2397-3374 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1038/s41562-020-01029-w
OpenAlex
W3121691237
Cited by
89
References
10
Citations by year
2026: 11 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 44 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 7
FWCI
54.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
Locations
  • Nature Human Behaviour (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Warwick Research Archive Portal (University of Warwick) (acceptedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Leverhulme Trust
  • RCUK | Economic and Social Research Council (ES/P008976/1, ES/V004867/1, ES/N018192/1)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Policing Practices and Perceptions
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis
  • Social Sciences › Education › Education Discipline and Inequality
Keywords
stop and search, ethnic prejudice, ethnic disparities, racial profiling, Asians, Black people, police decision-making
MeSH terms
Crime, Ethnicity, United Kingdom, Humans, Models, Theoretical, Police, Racism

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