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November 14, 2014: A Critical Evaluation of the Use of Race in Law Enforcement with Matthew Kopec

Philosophy Lecture Series
October 22, 2014
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Matthew Kopec
Postdoctoral Researcher, Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Theoretical Issues in Social Epistemology
Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University, Chicago

Friday, November 14, 2014
3:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Location

H 1220, Henry F. Hall Building,
1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West

Abstract

Law enforcement agencies around the world continue to use racial (or ethnic) descriptors in a number of ways. For example, investigators often ask witnesses about the race of a perpetrator, report this information (often in standardized code) to other officers over the radio, and then report this racial descriptor to the media for dissemination to the public. Oddly enough, so far no criminal justice researchers have deemed it necessary to test how reliable such uses of racial descriptors are.

In this talk, I’ll argue that we now have good reason to think that many such uses will, in fact, be unreliable. Recent empirical studies suggest that implicit bias is widespread in many communities. Others suggest that these kinds of biases are likely to spoil the reliability of racial descriptors, and in an especially problematic way – causing already stigmatized communities to be unduly subjected to suspicion and scrutiny. I argue this gives these law enforcement agencies strong reasons to suspend this use of racial des criptors until they present further research that shows these worries are ultimately unfounded.




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