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Justice Is Not Blind: A Preliminary Evaluation of an Implicit Bias Training for Justice Professionals

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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.

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Notes

  1. Removed items from pre- to post-training on the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy measure: I feel annoyed when people do not speak standard English; I get impatient when communicating with people from other racial or ethnic backgrounds, regardless of how well they speak English; I feel irritated when people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds speak their language around me; When I know my friends are treated unfairly because of their racial or ethnic backgrounds, I speak up for them; When I see people who come from a different racial or ethnic background succeed in the public arena, I share their pride; When other people struggle with racial or ethnic oppression, I share their frustration; It is difficult for me to relate to stories in which people talk about racial or ethnic discrimination they experience in their day to day lives; I feel uncomfortable when I am around a significant number of people who are racially/ethnically different than me.

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Acknowledgement

Edward Palmer, Sr. developed and conducted the implicit bias trainings, and was responsible for data collection.

Funding

This is not a funded or grant-supported study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mental Health, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, 415 N. Washington Street, Baltimore, MD, 21231, USA

    Rebecca L. Fix

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  1. Rebecca L. Fix
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Correspondence to Rebecca L. Fix.

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Rebecca L. Fix declares that she has no conflict of interest regarding the present study or manuscript.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Fix, R.L. Justice Is Not Blind: A Preliminary Evaluation of an Implicit Bias Training for Justice Professionals. Race Soc Probl 12, 362–374 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-020-09297-x

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