Recent events have drawn renewed attention to the persistent crisis of police violence against people of colour - particularly black, brown, and Indigenous people. As we experience the damage that this crisis has inflicted on so many lives and communities within North America, many of us are searching for reliable sources of information to illuminate the root causes of the problem in order to build towards constructive interventions.
To help inform these discussions, we have pulled together links to summaries of psychological research into the biases that contribute to police violence against people of colour. This research uses high-quality research methods and a variety of data sources to provide converging evidence into the psychological roots of this complex social problem.
- https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/meet-psychologist-exploring-unconscious-bias-and-its-tragic-consequences-society.
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https://www.wired.com/2015/01/implicit-bias-police-racism-science/
Here are links to research networks that investigate police biases from a psychological perspective:
- John Jay College's Center for Policing Equity: https://policingequity.org/
- Stanford University's SPARQ network: https://sparq.stanford.edu/our-work/criminal-justice
Finally, Jennifer Eberhardt's Biased: Uncovering the prejudice that shapes what we see, think, and do is an excellent book-length summary of research on psychological biases relevant to racial inequities in the criminal justice system and other contexts.