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Title:

Observed and Perceived Inconsistencies in U.S. Border Inspections

Accession Number:

01055869

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Abstract:

Observations of traffic inspections at a U.S. land border port of entry in El Paso, TX indicate that the process is highly variable. In a series of 24 half-hour observation periods of ordinary non-commercial traffic, the average inspection duration ranged from 16.6 s to 56.6 s. The proportion of inspections which involved some physical search of the vehicle, as indicated by the inspector leaving the inspection booth, varied from 5% to 56% in different observation periods. In 4 out of 10 cases, the log-mean of inspection duration in simultaneous observations of parallel lanes of traffic differed significantly (p<0.05). This suggests that differences in inspector behavior are responsible for much of the variability of the inspection process. Similar results are found for the SENTRI program. A survey of public perception reveals that a majority of English-language respondents perceive the inspectors to be fair while a majority of Spanish-language respondents perceive the process to be more arbitrary indicating that fairness “depends on the inspector”. Spanish-language respondents are also more likely to report having to submit to additional searches than English-language respondents. A common theme that emerges from the analysis of these two datasets is that efforts to standardize some aspects of inspections, while preserving inspector autonomy, may improve the performance of the process by eliminating variability which organized criminal groups may be able to exploit.

Monograph Accession #:

01042056

Report/Paper Numbers:

07-0986

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Ward, Nicholas Dudley
Gurian, Patrick Lee
Heyman, Josiah M
Howard, Cheryl

Pagination:

16p

Publication Date:

2007

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 86th Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2007-1-21 to 2007-1-25
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

CD-ROM

Features:

Figures (4) ; References (12) ; Tables (3)

Identifier Terms:

English language; Spanish language

Uncontrolled Terms:

Racial profiling

Subject Areas:

Administration and Management; Highways; Policy; Security and Emergencies; Society; I10: Economics and Administration

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2007 Paper #07-0986

Files:

BTRIS, TRIS, TRB

Created Date:

Feb 8 2007 5:34PM