By Ekow N. Yankah

A number of high-profile and racially charged killings, such as Trayvon Martin’s, Kenneth Herring’s, Ahmaud Arbery’s, and Jordan Neely’s, have been at the hands of civilians declaring themselves the law. These deaths stemmed from a phenomenon best described as “deputization.” Deputization describes a latent legal power that has empowered White people throughout American history to claim authority to enforce the law, as they see it, upon racial minorities generally and Black people in particular. This power turned the ancient common law duty to police all felons in England into a specific American common law duty to police Blacks. From the founding clauses of the Constitution to the Fugitive Slave Acts, to the birth of racist citizen’s arrest laws, there has always been an implicit understanding that part of Whiteness in America is a privilege to use private force to police Black people.

Deputization adds to the literature by focusing not only on racist state-sponsored violence but the privilege of racist private violence. Indeed, “deputization” is a more potent danger for Black Americans than racist policing. First, as a matter of magnitude, White Americans’ inherited assumption that they are authorized to violently enforce the law upon Black people dwarfs the reach of the police. Second, deputization is clothed in claims of legal authority; its power is amplified because those who act upon it feel they are in the right. Lastly, deputization shapes the way in which Black Americans so often move through the world: cautious, alert, or angry; their lives truncated, metaphorically and literally, by the awareness that White people around them claim a power to police them at any time.

Importantly, deputization presents a unique legal challenge because those who impose racial violence in its name do not fear the law; they are confident that they are both authorized by and reinforcing the law. This Article further places deputization in the context of two important areas of criminal theory. It shows how deputization presents another front in understanding critical race theories of criminal law. Simultaneously, it shows why civic, equality-based political theories are particularly insightful in identifying the harms deputization does to our civic bonds. Lastly, this Article shows the lessons of deputization can draw from criminal law abolitionism about the need to change deeper structures than policing while simultaneously cautioning of the dangers of private violence rushing to fill the void.

77 Stan. L. Rev. 703 (2025), 75p.

Racial Disparities in Arrests in Santa Clara County, California, 1980

By Sophia Hunt, Micayla Bozeman, and Matthew Clair

This report examines racial/ethnic disparities in arrests in Santa Clara County, California, from 1980 to 2019. Over the past forty years, felony and misdemeanor arrest rates have declined for all racial groups, but racial disparities have persisted and, in some cases, increased. Black residents, though a small percentage of the population, are disproportionately susceptible to being arrested. In the 2010s, the Black arrest rate was 5.4 times the White arrest rate—the highest BlackWhite ratio in arrest rates observed over the four decades. Nevertheless, as overall arrest rates declined over this period, the absolute difference between Black and White arrest rates substantially narrowed. Hispanic residents are also disproportionately arrested, but to a lesser degree than Black residents. Racial/ethnic disparities are most pronounced with respect to felony arrests; the Black-White ratio in felony arrest rates peaked at 7.2 in the 1980s and declined to 6.6 in the 2010s. Racial/ethnic disparities also exist, to a lesser degree, with respect to misdemeanor arrests. We find small racial differences in arrest dispositions (or, what law enforcement does with a person following arrest). However, it is noteworthy that, across all four decades, Black and Hispanic felony arrests are slightly more likely than White felony arrests to result in release due to “insufficient grounds to file a complaint.” This pattern could suggest that law enforcement officers are more likely to arrest Black and Hispanic residents for reasons that law enforcement entities later determine do not rise to the level sufficient for filing a complaint with the District Attorney’s Office.

Court Listening Project, Report No. 3,( c/o Matthew Clair, Stanford University), 2022. 30p.

By Reed T. DeAngelis

This research note provides new evidence consistent with systemic anti-Black racism in police killings across the United States. Data come from the Mapping Police Violence Database (2013–2021). I calculate race-specific odds and probabilities that victims of police killings exhibited mental illness, were armed with a weapon, or attempted to flee the scene at the time of their killing. Multilevel, multivariable logistic regression techniques are applied to further account for the victim's age, gender, year of killing, and geographical clustering. I find that White victims are underrepresented, and Black victims overrepresented in the database. Relative to White victims, Black victims also have 60% lower odds of exhibiting signs of mental illness, 23% lower odds of being armed, and 28% higher odds of fleeing. Hispanic victims exhibit 45% lower odds of being armed relative to their White peers but are otherwise comparable. These patterns persist regardless of the victim's age, gender, year of killing, or geographical location (state, zip code, and neighborhood type). Thus, the threshold for being perceived as dangerous, and thereby falling victim to lethal police force, appears to be higher for White civilians relative to their Black or Hispanic peers. Current findings provide empirical support for political initiatives to curb lethal police force, as such efforts could help to reduce racial disparities in deaths by police nationwide.

Race and Justice, Volume 14, Issue 3, July 2024, Pages 413-422