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Race, Street Life, and Policing: Implications for Racial Profiling

This paper contributes to research on the policing of marginalized po- pulations. Previous research established that street youth and black youth have higher rates of police contact than others; the purpose of this study was to learn why black youth and street youth receive such disproportionate attention. We looked at black street youth and their experiences with the police, a virtually unexplored topic (but see OGrady et al. 2013). Our results suggest that although black high school students are racially profiled during stops and searches, black street youth are not. This finding has yet to be documented in crimino- logical scholarship.

Our results lead to several explanations for this observation. First, our regression analyses for high school students indicate that race attracts police attention. Among youth who engage in roughly similar types of behaviour, and similar levels of delinquency, black youth are stopped and searched more often than white youth. Since these results remain consistent after other factors are controlled for, we conclude that black race is a defining feature that captures police attention. This finding in- dicates that conflict theory best explains the disproportionate police attention received by black high school students since it cannot be ac- counted for by their criminal behaviour.

Conversely, race is not a defining feature that captures the attention of police when they are dealing with street youth. There are several rea- sons for this. First, street youth commit more crimes, and commit crimes more often, than other youth. They also often panhandle an activity criminalized in Ontario during the study period (Hermer and Mosher 2002; Parnaby 2003). Furthermore, living arrangements bring street youth into frequent contact with the police. Although living and sleeping on the street is not a crime, research suggests that it is viewed as a form of public disorder that must be regulated (Amster 2008; Thrane et al. 2008; Johnsen and Fitzpatrick 2010). North American and Western European scholars note how members of society problema- tizerough sleeping, and consequently, police feel pressure to prevent it. Ultimately, higher rates of criminal offending and panhandling, and spending more time in public spaces, explain why street youth are more likely than high school students to be stopped and searched by police.

We suggest that because street-youth lifestyles dominate police percep- tions, racial cues (Piliavin and Briar 1964), which are often used as the

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Race, Street Life, and Policing 343

basis of police response, lose significance. This finding indicates that consensus theory best explains police treatment of street youth, includ- ing those who are black, because it is their criminality that invites attention, not their racial background. We conclude that, theoretically, both conflict and consensus theories are important for explaining why marginalized youth are approached by police and that the applicability of each perspective varies across different marginalized statuses and/ or types and levels of delinquent behaviour.

This paper aims to refine our understanding of racial profiling and po- licing. First, our findings add further support to the growing North American and European literature, which demonstrates that black youth are routinely and systematically subjected to racial profiling at the hands of the police, and they increase our confidence in racial- profiling arguments. Our findings are derived from a multivariate ana- lysis of self-report data, in contrast to many other racial-profiling stu- dies, which are based on less reliable data and methods such as official statistics, qualitative data from small samples, and data analysed using bivariate methods.

This paper also makes an important contribution to Canadian criminol- ogy by demonstrating that police racial profiling of black youth in Toronto is not consistent across different youth populations. This argu- ment is consistent with the concept of contextual discrimination, which posits that discrimination takes place, but only under certain circum- stances (Bowling and Phillips 2004). Research drawing on contextual racism as a theoretical framework has shown that racial discrimination has occurred at certain time periods but not others, some geographic regions but not others, and at some stages of the criminal justice system (police contact) but not others (sentencing). Steffensmeier, Ulmer, and Kramer (1998) and Steffensmeier and Demuth (2006), for example, found that race has a greater influence on the sentencing of younger male defendants than it does for older male defendants and that race influences sentencing for males but not females. Our findings contrib- ute to this literature by suggesting that street life is a context in which the racial discrimination of black youth in Toronto does not occur.

The findings of this study have some important policy implications. For example, they provide further evidence for the hypothesis that the Toronto police force systematically engages in racial profiling, suggest- ing that the department should take some form of action to address its unfair treatment of black youth. This study also has implications for understanding police treatment of black youth in Canada and the

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344 Revue canadienne de criminologie et de justice pénale juillet 2016

United States, which has received much media attention after the high- profile shootings of Michael Brown in Missouri, Trayvon Martin in Florida, and other black youth by white police officers (Blackmon and Thomas 2015; Rabinowitz 2015). It would seem logical that if a black youth behaves and avoids criminal activity, the chances of being pro- filed by police are lowered and that those who are involved in high le- vels of criminal activity are at greatest risk. However, our findings show the opposite: good behaviour does not protect black youth from racial discrimination.

Some limitations to our study must be addressed. First, the dataset we drew on is nearly 15 years old, so we cannot discount the possibility that our null finding pertaining to black street youth and stops and searches is restricted to that particular time period. However, using similar data-collection and methodological procedures, OGrady et al. (2013) report similar findings with respect to police encounters in Toronto between 2009 and 2011; this strongly suggests to us that our conclusions are pertinent to the current context. In addition, Fitzgerald and Carringtons (2011) very similar country-level findings, based on data collected and analysed using similar methods and techniques, suggest that our results are (unfortunately) in line with the national context of police discrimination. Furthermore, despite its age, our data- set remains one of the largest and most representative samples of high school students collected in Canada to date, and it has been used in numerous studies published on a wide range of topics, including tobacco use, music consumption, and experiences with crime and vic- timization (Wortley and Tanner 2003, 2005; Asbridge, Tanner, and Wortley 2005; Tanner, Asbridge, and Wortley 2008, 2015).

A second limitation is that our street youth sample was not randomly collected, and this raises questions about how generalizable our find- ings can be. However, given the large size of our sample and the fact that respondents were recruited from four of the largest homeless shel- ters in Toronto, we are confident that our sample is representative of the wider street youth population.

Third, findings from classic criminological studies published by Pilia- vin and Briar (1964) suggest that individualsdemeanour at the time that they are stopped by the police may heavily influence the way they are treated. For instance, the authors found that activities such as being cooperative, respectful, and fearful of sanctions may positively influ- ence how one is treated by a police officer. It is possible that the demea- nour of black street youth is generally different from the demeanour of

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Race, Street Life, and Policing 345

black high school students, thus explaining why high school students experience racial profiling at the hands of the police, whereas black street youth do not. For example, it could be that those who are stopped and searched by the police at higher levels of frequency are also typically acting disrespectfully, or perhaps they are being respect- ful but nevertheless resistant and oppositional. It could be that black high school students are more likely than white high school students to display this type of demeanour when interacting with police. We can also speculate from our findings (using Piliavin and Briars logic) that, unlike high school students, all street youth, regardless of their skin col- our, display a demeanour of resistance and opposition.

Unfortunately, our dataset does not contain any information about the specific types of behaviours, activities, and mannerisms the youth were engaging in at the time that they were contacted by police. This would be useful, as would information about the types of clothes they were wearing and the types of bags and/or accessories (bikes, scooters, roller blades, sports equipment, etc.) they were carrying. This is a sorely under-examined area of study that requires further research; however, to be done well, it must involve careful observational research, such as police ride-alongs.4

DMU Timestamp: February 07, 2020 23:04





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