The Russell Sage Foundation has awarded Calvin Lai, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, $127,015 for a randomized controlled trial aimed at addressing the gap between the aims and outcomes of implicit bias training in police departments.
The project, titled “Improving Police-Community Relations with a Social-Psychological Intervention for Reducing Racial Bias in Policing initiative,” will allow Lai to test a social-psychological program for training police officers to interact with citizens in a more racially equitable manner. Lai will recruit about 1,600 patrol officers from about 200 police beats as well as 1,500 community members.