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Research Article

Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect

Rob Voigt, Nicholas P. Camp, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, William L. Hamilton, Rebecca C. Hetey, Camilla M. Griffiths, David Jurgens, Dan Jurafsky, and Jennifer L. Eberhardt
  1. aDepartment of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
  2. bDepartment of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
  3. cDepartment of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305

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PNAS June 20, 2017 114 (25) 6521-6526; first published June 5, 2017; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1702413114
Rob Voigt
aDepartment of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
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  • For correspondence: robvoigt@stanford.edu jleberhardt@stanford.edu
Nicholas P. Camp
bDepartment of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
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Vinodkumar Prabhakaran
cDepartment of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
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William L. Hamilton
cDepartment of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
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Rebecca C. Hetey
bDepartment of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
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Camilla M. Griffiths
bDepartment of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
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David Jurgens
cDepartment of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
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Dan Jurafsky
aDepartment of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
cDepartment of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305
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Jennifer L. Eberhardt
bDepartment of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305;
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  • For correspondence: robvoigt@stanford.edu jleberhardt@stanford.edu
  1. Contributed by Jennifer L. Eberhardt, March 26, 2017 (sent for review February 14, 2017; reviewed by James Pennebaker and Tom Tyler)

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Significance

Police officers speak significantly less respectfully to black than to white community members in everyday traffic stops, even after controlling for officer race, infraction severity, stop location, and stop outcome. This paper presents a systematic analysis of officer body-worn camera footage, using computational linguistic techniques to automatically measure the respect level that officers display to community members. This work demonstrates that body camera footage can be used as a rich source of data rather than merely archival evidence, and paves the way for developing powerful language-based tools for studying and potentially improving police–community relations.

Abstract

Using footage from body-worn cameras, we analyze the respectfulness of police officer language toward white and black community members during routine traffic stops. We develop computational linguistic methods that extract levels of respect automatically from transcripts, informed by a thin-slicing study of participant ratings of officer utterances. We find that officers speak with consistently less respect toward black versus white community members, even after controlling for the race of the officer, the severity of the infraction, the location of the stop, and the outcome of the stop. Such disparities in common, everyday interactions between police and the communities they serve have important implications for procedural justice and the building of police–community trust.

  • racial disparities
  • natural language processing
  • procedural justice
  • traffic stops
  • policing

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: robvoigt{at}stanford.edu or jleberhardt{at}stanford.edu.
  • Author contributions: R.V., N.P.C., D. Jurafsky, and J.L.E. designed research; R.V. and N.P.C. performed research; V.P., W.L.H., R.C.H., C.M.G., and D. Jurgens contributed new reagents/analytic tools; R.V. and N.P.C. analyzed data; R.V., N.P.C., D. Jurafsky, and J.L.E. wrote the paper; and D. Jurafsky and J.L.E. served as PI on this project.

  • Reviewers: J.P., University of Texas at Austin; and T.T., Yale Law School.

  • Conflict of interest statement: J.L.E. was invited by a federal judge and monitor to serve as a Subject Matter Expert to assist with the Oakland Police Department’s reform efforts. The assignment began prior to the studies reported here.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1702413114/-/DCSupplemental.

Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.

http://www.pnas.org/site/misc/userlicense.xhtml

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Racial disparities in police language
Rob Voigt, Nicholas P. Camp, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, William L. Hamilton, Rebecca C. Hetey, Camilla M. Griffiths, David Jurgens, Dan Jurafsky, Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2017, 114 (25) 6521-6526; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1702413114

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Racial disparities in police language
Rob Voigt, Nicholas P. Camp, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, William L. Hamilton, Rebecca C. Hetey, Camilla M. Griffiths, David Jurgens, Dan Jurafsky, Jennifer L. Eberhardt
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2017, 114 (25) 6521-6526; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1702413114
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 114 (25)
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