Friday, November 19, 2021
1:00 PM in EST
SPEAKER: Ravi Shroff, NYU
ABSTRACT: To assess racial disparities in police interactions with the public, we compiled and analyzed a dataset detailing nearly 100 million municipal and state patrol traffic stops conducted in dozens of jurisdictions across the country---the largest such effort to date. We analyzed these records in three steps. First, we measured potential bias in stop decisions by examining whether Black drivers are less likely to be stopped after sunset, when a "veil of darkness" masks one's race. Second, we investigated potential bias in decisions to search stopped drivers. Finally, we examined the effects of legalizing recreational marijuana on policing in Colorado and Washington state. We find evidence of bias against minority drivers in both stop and search decisions, and also that the bar for searching minority drivers remains lower than for white drivers after marijuana legalization.
BIO: Ravi Shroff is an Assistant Professor of Applied Statistics in NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. His research interests are broadly related to computational social science, and in particular, the application of statistical and machine learning methods to a variety of urban issues. Previously, Ravi was a Senior Research Scientist at NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress, and before that, he was a postdoc in the Mathematical Sciences Institute at the Australian National University.
RSVP at https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJArdOCvrTItH9z8g7HOhh8IaDLyNiPYjtoX
This is a Harvard University event but it is open to the public.
For over a decade I published a free weekly listing of Energy (and Other) Events around Cambridge, MA which covered such events at the local colleges and universities and in the community (http://hubeventsnotes.blogspot.com/2013/11/what-i-do-and-why-i-do-it.html). I thought the local environmental and other groups would be interested but that didn’t turn out to be the case. In September 2020, I stopped because I myself wasn’t interested in lectures on subjects I’d followed closely for decades, from speakers I often had heard before, with no action items at the end.
Oddly enough, since everything is now online too, I was also covering climate and energy events from around the world as well at the time I stopped. If there were others interested in doing such an international (or local) listings service, I would be happy to resume my work but I ain’t gonna do it alone. (Hint)