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，立法机关、行政人员和公共官僚机构所采用的政策是通过社会工作者、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的。pi将研究一线执法人员的交通截停和传票政策的转变。交通截停和传票的现象很普遍，而且越来越多的证据表明，它们对少数族裔的影响格外严重。因此，交通拦截提供了一个直接和集中的机会来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对他们进行拦截和开罚单的可能性。他们还将审查监督政策——即警察必须记录和报告他们拦截的司机的种族——是否会在有此类政策的司法管辖区降低种族差异。最后，调查人员将检验几个假设，以解决街头官僚的自由裁量行为是否受到平等执法价值的显著影响。这项研究有可能为有关官僚裁量权、政治监督、警务、城市政治和政策的文献以及有关种族貌相和警察实践的政策辩论做出贡献。研究小组将对居住在堪萨斯城都市区（堪萨斯州和密苏里州）的非裔美国人和白人成年司机进行分层随机抽样电话调查，并对非裔美国人和过去几年被弯腰驾驶的司机进行过度抽样。这个采样框架为关键变量提供了实质性的变化。例如，堪萨斯城的居民在关键的个人特征和驾驶习惯上有所不同，两个州的个人代理人监督水平也有所不同。也就是说，密苏里州和堪萨斯州的两个城市都要求警察记录并报告所有被拦截车辆中司机的种族；堪萨斯城的其他司法管辖区没有这个要求。

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.