OVERVIEW OF IMPLICIT BIAS

Implicit race bias refers to unconscious attitudes and stereotypes. These attitudes develop through a cognitive process by which individuals assign a collection of characteristics to others based on their appearance and race (Eberhardt et al., Reference Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie and Davies2004). Implicit biases may lead people to misperceive reality and see things differently than they are—such as attributing increased muscularity to a Black person compared with a White person (Wilson et al., Reference Wilson, Hugenberg and Rule2017). In the criminal justice context, a police officer’s implicit biases could lead her to mistake a suspect’s cell phone for a gun (or the reverse), or to perceive a Black suspect as more threatening than a White suspect. Such split-second decisions based on subconscious perceptions may have deadly consequences. The increasing number of video recordings showing violent and deadly encounters between police officers and African American drivers, pedestrians, and others underscore this reality. A list of the well-known cases includes Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Sam DuBose, Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, and Walter Scott.^{Footnote 1} These and other cases have sparked national interest in understanding how implicit bias operates and with identifying interventions that would reduce its negative consequences. It is worth noting that for all the attention and praise that addressing implicit bias has received as a corrective for racial bias, we continue to see the same type of response in cases involving police violence against Black victims. Notably, few cases have resulted in murder charges and none of those has resulted in a conviction.

The increased interest in unconscious bias has been propelled in part by the popularity of the Implicit Association Test (IAT).^{Footnote 2} The test was developed by a team of researchers and measures the strength of test takers’ automatic mental associations. Users are asked to rapidly categorize target concepts (e.g., Black, White) with attributes (e.g., angry, lazy, or appealing). Easier pairings (i.e., quicker responses) are viewed as more strongly associated in one’s memory than more difficult pairings (e.g., slower responses), with the former suggesting a higher degree of unconscious bias. Worldwide, millions of people have visited the website to take the test and it has been widely cited by U.S. scholars and policymakers. Over the past decade, researchers, judges, and policy makers have studied how implicit bias works and have applied their findings to the justice system. For instance, scholars have examined how hidden racial biases operate and how reducing them may lead to a decline in racially-disparate outcomes across the criminal justice continuum (Russell-Brown Reference Russell-Brown2017). There has been a sharp rise in the number of law and social science journal articles and court cases that make reference to implicit bias. The information below provides a snapshot of the steep rise in scholarly acknowledgement of implicit bias.^{Footnote 3} An examination of two time periods, 2000–2008 and 2009–2017, shows that there was a dramatic increase in the number of scholarly citations to implicit bias.

The research findings on implicit bias have overwhelmingly supported the hypothesis that implicit racial bias exists and impacts decisions made within the criminal justice system. Specifically they establish that implicit racial bias works in a way that makes it more likely that African Americans will be perceived as criminals by the general public and by law enforcement officers. Based on this research, dozens of police agencies across the country have instituted training programs on implicit bias for police officers (Fridell Reference Fridell, Lynch, Britt Patterson and Childs2008; Spencer et al., Reference Spencer, Charbonneau and Glaser2016). As well, the American Bar Association offers a “de-biasing” program for judges and lawyers (American Bar Association 2016). In a novel approach, to addressing unconscious bias in the court system, U.S. District Court judge Mark Bennett discusses implicit bias with jurors (this includes encouraging them to take the Implicit Association Test), and instructs them not to allow their biases to influence their decisions (Bennett Reference Bennett2010, Reference Bennett2017).

LABELING IMPLICIT BIAS

Scholars have long noted the power of language in describing, defining, and creating society. As Michael Coyle (Reference Coyle2010) observes, “the use of language in social life can privilege certain discourses to dominance, while marginalizing alternative discourses” (p. 14). Thus, the label assigned to a social problem has meaning. For instance, “juvenile delinquency,” “racial profiling,” and even “criminal justice,” are labels that have an embedded social perspective (Coyle Reference Coyle2010; Solan and Tiersma, Reference Solan and Tiersma2005). Each one signals a viewpoint.^{Footnote 4}

There are several reasons that the label given to a social harm has significance: 1) the name may determine whether the social problem is treated as a serious social threat or as a low-level concern; 2) the label may affect whether researchers focus on the issue; and 3) the label may impact how the criminal justice system responds, e.g., which remedies are devised to address the problem. Given this country’s racial history and the general reticence to address racial issues, the labels assigned to race-related problems take on particular significance. It is important, then, to evaluate “implicit bias” as terminology. In the context of criminal justice, an assessment of the ramifications of “implicit bias” may yield insights about how the justice system works, and what the focus on implicit bias highlights and obscures about race and harm.

Public discussions about race are often uncomfortable and fraught with pitfalls. People who raise questions about racial issues, such as police violence or racial profiling, are often met with denial and dismissal. Indeed, researchers have documented that there is fatigue associated with race-related social problems. As Steven Gregory notes, many people believe that race is a “tiresome topic” (Gregory and Sanjek, Reference Gregory and Sanjek1994, p. 23). A 2015 YouGov survey found that 57% of Whites surveyed indicated that there is “too much” talk about race, compared with just 18% of Blacks; indeed, 49% of Blacks said that there is “not enough” talk about race (Moore Reference Moore2015). The popularity of terms such as “colorblindness” and “post-racial,” underscore the reality that many people are weary of talk about race. These terms project a world where race no longer matters because racial discrimination and division are historical relics. Yet, there are obvious problems with a non-racial approach, particularly for criminal justice research. Namely, the dominant racial ideology of colorblindness may promote the illusion of race neutrality and exacerbate racial disproportionality (Van Cleve and Mayes, 2015).

An examination of the term “implicit bias” allows for a look at what the label means and what it signifies about the social problem it describes. First, “implicit bias” sounds like an objective description of a phenomenon or an approach to understanding unconscious attitudes and behaviors. To the degree that the term signals race, it is a colorblind racial reference. The all-races-are-equal tenor of “implicit bias” becomes apparent when we consider an alternative term: “implicit racism.” This latter term, a dramatic reframing, is arguably a more accurate label for what researchers examine when they study implicit racial bias in criminal justice; yet, it is not the label used to describe this research. Thus, the call here is for scholars to give due consideration to “implicit bias” as a language choice, with attention to whether it helps or impedes efforts to understand how unconscious racial bias works in the justice system.

A second observation about “implicit bias” is that the term describes a cognitive process—not a harm or a criminal wrong. Nor does the term communicate that the phenomenon of implicit racial bias has a racially-disparate impact within the criminal justice system (Eberhardt et al., Reference Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie and Davies2004). In fact, implicit racial bias is a microlevel process that has a macrolevel impact. As noted earlier, a law enforcement officer’s unconscious biases about race may lead him to shoot a Black man because he wrongly believes the man is holding a weapon. Implicit biases may also result in unintended and inefficient outcomes. The fact that police officers are less likely to “see” White suspects holding weapons (even when they are holding them) could potentially mean that White offenders will have more time to cause harm to officers (and others) and more time to escape. These observations show how unconscious biases can upend the fairness and efficiency of justice system outcomes. Yet, in contrast to the labels for some social problems—such as the “opioid epidemic” and “juvenile delinquency,”—“implicit bias” terminology neither signals the need for an intervention by the criminal justice system nor a criminal harm. “Implicit bias” does not signal a social problem label that requires urgent action. In this way, “implicit bias” masks the harm caused by its practice.

The above concerns notwithstanding, there may be other interpretations of “implicit bias.” It could be argued that because the term sounds objective and race neutral, it makes the term palatable to a larger, race-averse audience, and as such, may open the door for productive discussions and changes about racial bias in policing and prosecution. “Implicit bias” may be embraceable, particularly by people who work within the justice system—police officers, judges, lawyers, and correctional officials. As noted in the above-cited YouGov survey, there is a desire by many people—particularly by Whites—to avoid conversations about race. Using the term “implicit bias” (or even “implicit racial bias”), compared with “implicit racism,” avoids racial blame and guilt. For many people, addressing racial bias without directly talking about race may be an attractive approach. To the degree that this less obvious approach brings the issue of racial bias to large numbers of people, it may be successful. Yet, while implicit bias as a strategy may have benefits of raising awareness and fostering initial conversations, it remains problematic.

EXPLICIT VERSUS IMPLICIT BIAS

For many people, implicit racial bias may offer a more attractive approach to studying racial discrimination than explicit racial bias. Because implicit racial bias involves an unconscious process, individuals are less likely to be seen as culpable for having implicit biases—at least not in the same way a person would be held responsible for engaging in explicit racial bias (e.g., racial slurs, derogatory statements and actions against members of a particular racial group). That is, implicit bias may be heralded as an approach to understanding racial bias because it is less controversial, easier to discuss in public, and because it does not assign personal fault to individuals with racial bias. As well, the implicit bias paradigm may be appealing because it identifies racial bias but not racists. This constitutes a form of what Eduardo Bonilla-Silva refers to as “racism without racists” (Bonilla-Silva Reference Bonilla-Silva2009). Thus, developing interventions to stem implicit bias may be more attractive to criminal justice system decision makers—judges, lawyers, and jurors—because they have the allure of an approach that involves utilizing race as a carrot and not as a stick (Russell-Brown Reference Russell-Brown2017). The “carrot” offered includes any of the possible procedural steps that could be taken to address implicit bias (e.g., juror education, officer training on implicit bias). In contrast, an offer of a “stick” might include education and discussion about the U.S.’s history of race, including chattel slavery, the two-tier criminal justice system that developed, and the relationship between slave patrols and U.S. policing—facts of our past that many people are not familiar with and would prefer not to discuss. Implicit bias creates a pathway to avoid this racial thicket.

To the degree that implicit bias offers a new sociological approach to understanding how racial bias operates, we need to make sure that the empirical research adds to (rather than pivots away from) our understanding of how all forms of racial bias affect outcomes in the justice system. In his discussion of the “paradox” of implicit bias, Michael Selmi (Reference Selmi2017) argues that the zeal to use the label “implicit bias” is based on a misunderstanding of bias and how it works. He observes that racial bias expands across a continuum and cannot easily be reduced to either implicit or explicit. For instance, racial bias may be subtle and operate in ways that are neither totally explicit nor totally unconscious. Further, Selmi cautions, when an act of racial bias is categorized as an act of implicit bias, it makes establishing racial animus difficult and may place the racial discrimination beyond legal reach. Going a step further, Jonathan Kahn (Reference Kahn2017) argues that implicit bias has become a “master narrative of race relations” (p. 11). Instead it should be viewed as an approach to understanding racialized behaviors.

Given the appeal of implicit bias, sociologists and criminologists should remain alert to how studying implicit bias may overshadow research on explicit bias as well as perspectives based on intentional racial discrimination—specifically whether the popularity of implicit bias masks the problem of intentional racial discrimination. For instance, while reforms designed to reduce levels of implicit bias may be effective, they may also work to obscure the racial hierarchy deeply embedded in U.S. racial history.

As forms of bias, implicit and explicit racial bias are interrelated and work together. Because they are connected, action is required to mitigate the harms caused by both forms. The following diagram is a visual articulation of this argument:

Explicit bias and implicit racial bias are both features of institutional racism. Institutional racial bias works in both overt and covert ways. For instance, some of the implicit biases that individuals have—such as associating Blacks with deviance, low education, and poverty—derive from historical and structural forces (e.g., segregation, redlining, etc.) (Eberhardt et al., Reference Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie and Davies2004). The same structural paths can cultivate explicit biases. As well, people who demonstrate high levels of implicit racial bias may be less likely to express their explicit biases. Implicit racial bias operates alongside and in reaction to explicit bias. Likewise, explicit racial bias operates alongside and in reaction to implicit bias. Thus, a person can have both implicit and explicit racial biases; the two forms of bias are not mutually exclusive. It is important for criminologists to explore in detail the relationship between these phenomena. Most importantly, scholars must consider how these different forms of racial bias (including institutional racism), work to impact criminal justice system treatment and outcomes. As Ruth Peterson (Reference Peterson2017) argues:

Peterson’s statement highlights the rich empirical agenda offered by implicit bias. Analyses of implicit bias are integral to assessments of how explicit bias works (and how different types of racial bias interact). It is also important to determine whether the justice system is any more responsive to harms caused by implicit racial bias than to harms caused by explicit racial bias. Some researchers have noted the symbiotic relationship between implicit bias and the criminal justice system itself. For instance, Justin Levinson and Robert J. Smith (2017) state that the justice system itself is “culturally and cognitively inseparable from implicit bias” (p. 407). That is, understanding and addressing implicit bias requires understanding how race matters and courses through the larger justice system apparatus.

IMPLICIT BIAS THROUGH A CHILD’S EYES

Interventions designed to reduce the impact of implicit racial bias have been directed at various points along the justice system continuum—including police, courts, and corrections. For instance, police agencies across the country have implemented implicit bias training programs to help officers identify and alter their own unconscious biases.^{Footnote 5} Likewise, there have been efforts to train judges, prosecutors, and jurors on the impact that implicit biases may have on case outcomes (Bennett Reference Bennett2017; Smith and Levinson, 2012). While these justice system adaptations are notable, they do not adequately account for how early individual biases develop, and how quickly biases can become entrenched. Thus, reducing racially-biased outcomes in the criminal justice system will require more than training the people who work within the justice system.

Early education and exposure to topics that involve race, racial groups, and race relations can work to mitigate implicit bias (Russell-Brown 2014). The primary and secondary years are a critical time for enhancing the educational curriculum around race. School-based interventions hold promise for stemming the development of racial biases (implicit and explicit). One example would be for the K-12 curriculum to include a robust and inclusive study of U.S. racial history and racial relations. Curricula efforts to reframe race may work to counteract stereotypical and degrading media images about racial groups of color. If left unchallenged, negative media portrayals of racial minorities may have longstanding consequences—ones that foster implicit racial biases. All told, the public education system should be treated as another site—along with the criminal justice system—for anti-bias work. This focus would also serve as a proactive strategy for addressing implicit bias.