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. 2024 Mar;73(1-2):91-103.
doi: 10.1002/ajcp.12671. Epub 2023 Apr 17.

Risk, race, and predictive policing: A critical race theory analysis of the strategic subject list

Andrea L DaViera  1 , Marbella Uriostegui  2 , Aaron Gottlieb  3 , Ogechi Cynthia Onyeka  4
Affiliations

Risk, race, and predictive policing: A critical race theory analysis of the strategic subject list

Andrea L DaViera et al. Am J Community Psychol. 2024 Mar.

Abstract

Predictive policing is a tool used increasingly by police departments that may exacerbate entrenched racial/ethnic disparities in the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). Using a Critical Race Theory framework, we analyzed arrest data from a predictive policing program, the Strategic Subject List (SSL), and questioned how the SSL risk score (i.e., calculated risk for gun violence perpetration or victimization) predicts the arrested individual's race/ethnicity while accounting for local spatial conditions, including poverty and racial composition. Using multinomial logistic regression with community area fixed effects, results indicate that the risk score predicts the race/ethnicity of the arrested person while accounting for spatial context. As such, despite claims of scientific objectivity, we provide empirical evidence that the algorithmically-derived risk variable is racially biased. We discuss our study in the context of how the SSL reinforces a pseudoscientific justification of the PIC and call for the abolition of these tools broadly.

Keywords: critical race theory; predictive policing; prison industrial complex; risk assessment.

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References

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