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The Justice Department wants its employees to be aware of their unconscious racism

33,000 federal agents and prosectors will receive mandatory training on how unconscious bias influences their decisions on the job.
(Toby Talbot/AP)

The US Justice Department is set to announce a new training program for more than 33,000 federal agents and prosecutors aimed at preventing unconscious bias from influencing their law enforcement decisions, department officials told Reuters.

The training will bring Justice Department employees in line with many local police departments across the country – such as in Baltimore, New York City, Seattle, New Orleans and Los Angeles – which were developed in the wake of protests against police bias and use of force in minority communities.

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The Justice Department urged other local police forces to develop programs to combat bias, at the direction of a task force created by President Barack Obama after the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri after a black, unarmed teenager was shot and killed by a white police officer.

Arrest data compiled by some police departments have shown that black and Hispanic men are more likely to be stopped by police than others, suggesting officers may be exerting implicit bias in deciding whom to question or apprehend.

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In an internal memo obtained by Reuters, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said the program would target "implicit biases" — subtle, unconscious stereotypes or characterizations that people make against certain groups of people.

"But implicit bias also presents unique challenges to effective law enforcement, because it can alter where investigators and prosecutors look for evidence and how they analyze it without their awareness or ability to compensate," Yates said in the memo.

The training will be mandatory for all Justice Department agents and prosecutors and will be rolled out over the next year.

The Justice Department employs more than 5,800 attorneys and 28,000 law enforcement agents across four agencies: The FBI, the DEA, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the US Marshals Service. Employees from Department of Homeland Security will not be subject to the training.

Yates and the heads of other Justice Department components will begin their own implicit bias training course on Tuesday. Attorney General Loretta Lynch will officially announce the initiative in Phoenix on Tuesday when she travels there as part of her community policing tour, Reuters reports.