The challenge
Racial and ethnic disparities in police stops, frisks, arrests and use of force.
The case
In 2018 the New York Police Department began implicit bias training for its roughly 36,000 sworn staff, using the Fair and Impartial Policing curriculum. Between May 2018 and April 2019, the one-day course was rolled out to clusters of police commands in a randomly assigned order, letting researchers led by Robert Worden compare trained and not-yet-trained officers. The trial covered 14,471 officers. Surveys showed officers became more aware of implicit bias and more willing to manage it. But enforcement records showed no detectable change in racial or ethnic disparities in stops, frisks, searches, arrests, summonses or use of force: none of the estimated effects was statistically significant.
Why it didn't work
A one-off training can shift what officers say without changing what they do; disparities need changes to policies, supervision and incentives, not awareness alone.
Sources
- Worden, R. E. et al. (2024). Implicit bias training for police: Evaluating impacts on enforcement disparities. Law and Human Behavior.
- NPR (2020). NYPD Study: Implicit Bias Training Changes Minds, Not Necessarily Behavior.
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