The importance of context in understanding biased policing: state patrol traffic citations in Washington State

Several studies have provided evidence that racial profiling on the part of law enforcement agencies in the USA is a widespread problem. In contrast to most extant analyses of biased policing, our multivariate analyses of approximately 1.6 million traffic stops by the Washington State Patrol disaggregate the data from the state level to smaller jurisdictions and examine differences in rates of citation for several minority groups. The analyses reveal that, when racial/ethnic differences in the commission of traffic violations are taken into account, the initial effects of race/ethnicity on the probability of receiving a citation are greatly attenuated.