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Factors Influencing Racial Disparities In Traffic Enforcement In Massachusetts, Jack Mcdevitt

Jack McDevitt

This dissertation seeks to understand the extent to which community-level or organizational-level factors are related to the level of racial disparity in traffic enforcement in Massachusetts. Prior research has demonstrated that racial disparities exist in the ways traffic laws are enforced in Massachusetts and in many other communities across the United States. Little research, however, has focused on what factors may be associated with these disparities. Two theoretical frameworks suggest potential explanations for the disparities that have been identified: racial-threat theory and police-organizational theory. Racial threat theory suggests that racial characteristics of a community, such as the size of the …