Justice Is Not Blind: A Preliminary Evaluation of an Implicit Bias Training for Justice Professionals
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Justice Is Not Blind: A Preliminary Evaluation of an Implicit Bias Training for Justice Professionals Rebecca L. Fix1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract While there are several studies that have tested efficacy of implicit bias trainings, none have tested how working within a justice profession or how one’s racial identity impact outcomes following participation in such a training. Additionally, though empathy influences bias, no studies have tested for the effect of implicit bias training on ethnocultural empathy. The present study is a program evaluation of an implicit bias training program that examines the effects of profession and racial identity on outcomes, including ethnocultural empathy. The implicit bias training was a 3-h standardized training that described how implicit biases are formed, how they impact children in the school-to-prison pipeline and adults in society, the short- and long-term consequences of those biases, and strategies for responding to one’s own implicit biases. Participants who completed implicit bias trainings were 243 justice professionals and 274 non-justice professionals. Results indicated training outcomes were significantly associated with participant gender, race, racial identity, and whether participants worked in justice or non-justice professions. In addition, participants indicated several strengths and assets of the program; how receptive participants were to implicit bias training components was significantly associated with gender, race, and whether the participants worked in justice settings. The current study provides a necessary but incomplete picture of the strengths and weaknesses of this implicit bias training, lending support for continued trainings with more in-depth and longitudinal study of them. Keywords Race · Disparity · Disproportionate minority contact · Adolescent · Youth
Introduction In the USA during 2018, black, Native North American, and Latinx children were significantly more likely to be detained or confined than white children (Hockenberry and Puzzanchera 2018). Numerous studies show a preponderance of children of color at nearly all stages of juvenile justice processing (Spinney et al. 2018). Moreover, there is a large body of literature assessing why we see this phenomenon of disproportionate minority contact (Leiber and Fix 2019). Race and racial identity impact outcomes for people; race refers to a classification of a person based on shared physical features with a particular group (e.g., black, Asian American), whereas racial identity is defined * Rebecca L. Fix [email protected] 1
as, “feelings of [racial and/or] ethnic belonging and pride, a secure sense of group membership, and positive attitudes toward one’s ethnic group” (Phinney and Alipuria 1996, p. 142). Still, the critical question remains: how can we reduce—and ultimately prevent—bias in the juvenile justice system? The current study begins to answer this question through a preliminary evaluation of a promising implicit bias trai
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