(Image Credit: Michael Schlosser, director of the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois, offers new recruits training on interactions with minority communities. (L. Brian Stauffer)

Michael Schlosser wants new police officers to understand one thing before they go out in the field: They’re influenced by racial bias.

This strategy is a major component of a three-year-old diversity education course at the Police Training Institute at the University of Illinois, where officers are encouraged to recognize and accept the innate prejudices they hold. The theory is that knowing that these subconscious stereotypes may impact their judgment will make them more empathetic police officers, and may, in time, even reduce such ingrained biases.

“Based on our life experiences, based on how we’re raised, our parents, our friends, what we see on television, everything that interacts with us, we all have this unconscious racism,” Schlosser said. “It doesn’t make us bad people. It’s just the reality. If we understand it and take ownership of it and base our policing on behavior, can we reduce implicit bias? We believe we can, but it’s a difficult thing to do.”

It’s a challenge to get them to “reflect and internalize their own personal biases, values and assumptions,” Schlosser wrote in a 2015 paper published in the International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences. Many officers ascribe to being “colorblind,” which Schlosser described as a form of racism in itself. By claiming to not see race, they’re ignoring the real challenges minorities face that white people do not, he said.

He’s also adding a mindfulness training component to give officers the skills that could give them more self control and situation awareness when they arrive at a scene. The Institute is currently analyzing data to determine whether teaching mindfulness has had the effect of lowering officers’ stress through measuring their heart rates and stress hormones.

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