Reconstructing Law on the Street: The Influence of Citizen Characteristics on Traffic Law Enforcement

越来越多的学术研究表明，立法机构、行政部门和公共官僚机构通过社会工作者、税务审计员和警察等一线公职人员的自由裁量行动来修改甚至改变政策。 督察会研究前缐执法人员对截停及传讯政策的转变。 交通拦截和传讯很普遍，越来越多的证据表明，它们对少数民族的影响不成比例。 因此，交通站提供了一个直接和集中的机会，以评估公民的个人特征对街头执法的影响。 PI将测试几个假设，这些假设涉及司机的种族、性别、社会经济地位和其他特征如何影响警察拦截并开罚单的可能性。 他们还将研究监督政策，即警察必须记录和报告他们拦截的司机的种族，是否会导致这种政策的司法管辖区的种族差异较小。 最后，调查人员将测试几个假设，解决是否自由裁量权的行动，街道一级的官僚显着影响的价值，平等执法。 . 这项研究有可能为有关官僚自由裁量权、政治监督、治安、城市政治和政策的文献以及有关种族貌相和警察做法的政策辩论做出贡献。研究小组将对堪萨斯城大都会区居民中的非洲裔美国人和白色成年司机进行分层随机抽样电话调查（在堪萨斯和密苏里州），对非洲裔美国人和过去几年弯腰驼背的司机进行了过度抽样。这一抽样框架为关键变量提供了很大的变化。 例如，堪萨斯城的居民在关键的个人特征和驾驶习惯上各不相同，两个州的个人代理监督水平也各不相同。 也就是说，密苏里州和两个堪萨斯地铁市政当局要求官员记录和报告所有停车车辆中司机的种族;其他堪萨斯城管辖区没有这一要求。

A growing body of scholarship suggests that policies adopted by legislatures, executives, and public bureaucracies are revised, even transformed, through the discretionary actions of front-line public officials such as social workers, tax auditors, and police officers. The PIs will examine the transformation of the policy of the traffic stop and citation by front-line law enforcement officers. Traffic stops and citations are widespread, and there is growing evidence that they disproportionately affect racial minorities. Thus, traffic stops offer a direct and focused opportunity to assess the effects of citizens' personal characteristics on street-level law enforcement. The PIs will test several hypotheses concerning how drivers' race, sex, socioeconomic status, and other characteristics influence the likelihood that police officers will stop and ticket them. They will also examine whether oversight policies-namely, that police officers must record and report the race of drivers whom they stop-result in lower racial disparities in jurisdictions with such policies. Lastly, the investigators will test several hypotheses that address whether discretionary actions of street-level bureaucrats are significantly influenced by the value of equal enforcement of the law. . The research had the potential to contribute to literatures on bureaucratic discretion, political oversight, policing, and urban politics and policy and to the policy debate over racial profiling and police practices.The research team will conduct a telephone survey of a stratified random sample of African-American and white adult driers who are residents of the Kansas City metro area (in both Kansas and Missouri), with an over-sampling of African-Americans and of drivers who have been stooped in the last years. This sampling frame offers substantial variation to on key variables. For example, residents of Kansas City vary on key personal characteristics and driving habits, and the level of personal-agent oversight varies in the two states. That is, the state of Missouri and two Kansas metro municipalities require officers to record and report the race of the driver in all stopped vehicles; other Kansas City jurisdictions do not have this requirement.