The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement has brought renewed public attention to an
enduring social problem in America: racial disparities in policing, and gaps in police-community
trust. Where do these inequities come from? What processes contribute to disparities in the
policing? And what can we do to address them? The overarching goal of this course is to get
“under the hood” of racial inequality in policing through organizational analysis: to identify the
institutional and individual contributors to disparities, so that we can combat them.

One specific aim of this course is to introduce students to theoretical and empirical studies of
disparities in policing. This is a systemic issue; accordingly, we will examine research from
psychology, sociology, legal studies, and organizational behavior to understand how each of
these perspectives shed light on different aspects of race and police-community relations. In
doing so, we will situate this issue to broader theories of organizational theory (discretion,
organizational change) and psychology (implicit bias, procedural justice).