A critique of the "Outcome test" in racial profiling research

In racial profiling research, four different research perspectives - legalistic, criminological, economic, and normative - have emerged. The analytical techniques of two of these perspectives, the legalistic and criminological, have been thoroughly detailed in prior research. More recently, the economic perspective has presented an alternative analytical strategy (i.e., the outcome test), to determine racial and ethnic discrimination by police. When applied to police searches, the outcome test is a statistical comparison of search success rates across racial and ethnic groups. The outcome test, however, is based on a number of underlying assumptions regarding police and citizen behaviors that do not coincide with what is known about decision-making during police-citizen encounters. These underlying assumptions are described and the conclusions based on the use of the outcome test are critiqued. The implications for the use of the outcome test and other analytical techniques for the future of racial profiling research are discussed.