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Pretextual Traffic Stops and Racial Disparities in their Use

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  • Makofske, Matthew

Abstract

A moving-violation traffic stop is pretextual when it is motivated by suspicion of an unrelated crime. Despite concerns that they infringe on civil liberties and enable discrimination against minority motorists; evidence on the use, frequency, and nature of pretextual stops is mostly anecdotal. Using nearly a decade's worth of traffic citation data from Louisville, KY, I find evidence suggesting that pretextual stops predicated on a particular moving violation—failure to signal—were relatively frequent. Compared to stops involving other similarly common moving violations, where arrest rates range from 0.01 to 0.09, stops involving failure-to-signal yield an arrest rate of 0.42. More importantly, pretext to stop a vehicle requires only one traffic violation. In stops involving failure-to-signal, the arrest rate is 0.52 when no other traffic violations are cited, and the presence of other traffic violations yields a 55% relative decrease in the probability of arrest. Relative to conventional traffic stops, black and Hispanic motorists account for a disproportionate share of likely pretextual stops. Yet, within likely pretextual stops, they are arrested at a significantly lower rate than other motorists. Following departmental adoption of body-worn cameras (body cams) I find that the arrest rate in likely pretextual stops increases 33-34%, and the racial disparity in the arrest rate becomes much smaller and statistically insignificant.

Suggested Citation

  • Makofske, Matthew, 2020. "Pretextual Traffic Stops and Racial Disparities in their Use," MPRA Paper 100792, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:100792
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    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/102435/15/MPRA_paper_102435.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Conover, Emily & Kraynak, Daniel & Singh, Prakarsh, 2023. "The effect of traffic cameras on police effort: Evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    pretextual traffic stop; racial bias; law enforcement;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

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