Order and Chaos
A large-scale analysis of racial disparities in police stops across the United States
Emma Pierson et al.
Nature Human Behaviour, forthcoming
Abstract:
We assessed racial disparities in policing in the United States by compiling and analysing a dataset detailing nearly 100 million traffic stops conducted across the country. We found that black drivers were less likely to be stopped after sunset, when a ‘veil of darkness’ masks one’s race, suggesting bias in stop decisions. Furthermore, by examining the rate at which stopped drivers were searched and the likelihood that searches turned up contraband, we found evidence that the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was lower than that for searching white drivers. Finally, we found that legalization of recreational marijuana reduced the number of searches of white, black and Hispanic drivers — but the bar for searching black and Hispanic drivers was still lower than that for white drivers post-legalization. Our results indicate that police stops and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias and point to the value of policy interventions to mitigate these disparities.
The effect of suspect race on police officers’ decisions to draw their weapons
John Worrall, Stephen Bishopp & William Terrill
Justice Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Researchers are working to identify appropriate benchmarks for exploring racial bias in the officer-involved shooting (OIS) context. Two recent studies benchmarked OIS against incidents in which officers drew weapons but did not shoot. A problem is that the decision to draw a weapon may itself be subject to bias. Using 2017 use-of-force data from the Dallas Police Department, we modeled officers’ decisions to draw their weapons as a function of suspect race and other suspect, officer, and incident characteristics. We benchmarked by limiting analyses to arrest and active aggression cases, thereby excluding interactions in which it was less likely suspects would have had weapons drawn against them. The key finding was that black suspects were no more or less likely to have weapons drawn against them than other suspects.
Policing the Police: The Impact of "Pattern-or-Practice" Investigations on Crime
Tanaya Devi & Roland Fryer
NBER Working Paper, June 2020
Abstract:
This paper provides the first empirical examination of the impact of federal and state "Pattern-or-Practice" investigations on crime and policing. For investigations that were not preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force, investigations, on average, led to a statistically significant reduction in homicides and total crime. In stark contrast, all investigations that were preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime. We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%. Other theories we test such as changes in community trust or the aggressiveness of consent decrees associated with investigations -- all contradict the data in important ways.
Were California’s Decarceration Efforts Smart? A Quasi-Experimental Examination of Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Disparities
Aaron Gottlieb et al.
Criminal Justice and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Over the last decade, California has undertaken one of the largest criminal justice reform efforts in recent U.S. history. However, little is known about the causal impact of these reforms on the overall incarceration rate and disparities in incarceration rates across demographic subgroups. Using a quasi-experimental synthetic control method and data from the Vera Institute of Justice and the U.S. Census Bureau, our results provide strong evidence that California’s reforms have substantially reduced the state’s overall incarceration rate, but that they have resulted in an increase in Latinx-White incarceration disparities. We also find suggestive evidence that the reforms have exacerbated Black-White incarceration disparities and disparities between men and women. Our study is especially relevant at a time when the United States is increasingly interested in reducing the population of people incarcerated and suggests that care must be taken to ensure that reform efforts do not increase incarceration disparities among demographic subgroups.
The Imperial Origins of American Policing: Militarization and Imperial Feedback in the Early 20th Century
Julian Go
American Journal of Sociology, March 2020, Pages 1193-1254
Abstract:
In the early 20th century, police departments across America’s cities enhanced their infrastructural power by adopting various tactical, operational, and organizational innovations. Based upon a nested cross-city analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, including a negative binomial regression analysis of the determinants of militarization, this study reveals that these innovations constituted an early form of militarization resulting from imperial feedback. Local police borrowed tactics, techniques, and organizational templates from America’s imperial-military regime that had been developed to conquer and rule foreign populations. Imperial feedback occurred as a result of imperial importers, many of them veterans of America’s imperial-military apparatus, who constructed analogies between colonial subjects abroad and racialized minorities at home. The study identifies an early form of police militarization, reveals the imperial origins of police militarization, and offers a potentially transportable theory of imperial feedback that stands as one among other possible routes to police militarization.
The Effects of Parental and Sibling Incarceration: Evidence from Ohio
Samuel Norris, Matthew Pecenco & Jeffrey Weaver
University of Chicago Working Paper, May 2020
Abstract:
Every year, millions of Americans experience the incarceration of a family member. Using 30 years of administrative data from Ohio and exploiting differing incarceration propensities of randomly assigned judges, this paper provides the first quasi-experimental estimates of the effects of parental and sibling incarceration in the US. Contrary to conventional wisdom, parental incarceration has beneficial effects on children, reducing their likelihood of incarceration by 4.9 percentage points and improving their adult socioeconomic status. We can also reject large positive or negative effects of parental incarceration on academic performance and teen parenthood. Sibling incarceration leads to similar reductions in criminal activity.
Out-of-Place and In-Place Policing: An Examination of Traffic Stops in Racially Segregated Philadelphia
Lance Hannon, Malik Neal & Alex Gustafson
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is commonly argued that Black people may be more likely to be stopped by the police in majority White neighborhoods due to a natural tendency to first observe and then scrutinize that which seems out of the ordinary. Anecdotal evidence of police officers appearing equally drawn to White people in predominantly Black neighborhoods is sometimes presented to suggest that the phenomenon is race neutral. Motivated by such narratives, we examine the extent to which Black versus White racial categorization encourages police scrutiny in out-of-place and in-place contexts. Applying the veil-of-darkness and vehicle search threshold tests, we find that in place or out of place, being seen as White is always an advantage in Philadelphia.
Entrepreneurship as a Response to Labor Market Discrimination for Formerly Incarcerated People
Kylie Jiwon Hwang & Damon Phillips
Columbia University Working Paper, March 2020
Abstract:
This paper examines entrepreneurship as a way to overcome labor market discrimination. Specifically, we examine entrepreneurship as a career choice for formerly incarcerated individuals, a group of individuals who face substantial discrimination in the labor market. Using the United States National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 data, we find that formerly incarcerated people are more likely to become entrepreneurs compared to individuals without a criminal record. We take advantage of an exogenous state and county level policy shock “Ban-the-Box” in the United States to further disentangle the underlying mechanism of how labor market discrimination affects formerly incarcerated individuals in their entrepreneurial choices. The findings suggest that entrepreneurship is a viable alternative career choice for formerly incarcerated people, yielding both higher income and lower recidivism rates. In addition to reporting robustness checks and addressing alternative explanations, we discuss theoretical, empirical, and policy implications.
Managerial Delegation, Law Enforcement, and Aggregate Productivity
Jan Grobovšek
Review of Economic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
I propose a novel general equilibrium framework to quantify the impact of law enforcement on the internal organization of firms and thereby on aggregate outcomes. The model features an agency problem between the firm and its middle managers. Imperfect law enforcement allows middle managers to divert revenue from firms, which reduces delegation and constrains firm size. I use French matched employer-employee data for evidence of the model’s pattern of managerial wages. Relative to the French benchmark economy, reducing law enforcement to its minimum value decreases GDP (equivalently, TFP) by 23 percent and triples the self-employment rate. Consistent with the model, I document cross-country empirical evidence of a positive correlation between law enforcement indicators and the aggregate share of managerial workers. Mapped across the world, the model explains 3 to 6 percent of the ratio in GDP per worker between the poorest and richest quintile of countries, and 6 to 11 percent of their TFP ratio.
A scientific examination of the 21-foot rule
William Sandel, Hunter Martaindale & Pete Blair
Police Practice and Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to scientifically assess the long-standing 21-foot rule. There are several anecdotal publications looking at the 21-foot rule as a standard in policing. This study uses experimental design to examine whether this standard should continue in modern-day policing. The 21-foot rule was tested in three independent experimental design studies. The first study measured the average speed at which a person could run 21 feet. The second and third studies tested the speed at which an officer could draw and fire their weapon with no stress and under stress respectively. The final study examined methods for increasing survivability for the officer (movement). The findings show the 21-foot rule to be an inadequate standard for officers to safely draw and fire their weapons when being charged by a suspect who’s intent it to cause harm. Additionally, different strategies of moving can increase the officer’s ability to survive.
Why did Mexico become a violent country? Assessing the role of firearms trafficked from the U.S.
David Perez Esparza, Shane Johnson & Paul Gill Security
Journal, June 2020, Pages 179–209
Abstract:
While most countries have experienced a crime drop in the last few decades, Mexico experienced a dramatic increase in violent crime since the mid-2000s. In this paper, we test whether the increase in violence observed in Mexico is consistent with theories of crime opportunity. In particular, we explore whether the rise in violence between 1999 and 2011 can be explained by an increase in the availability of illegal weapons (a situational explanation) that resulted from policy changes (and increases in firearms production) in the bordering U.S. Analyses are conducted to test whether changes to U.S. gun policy led to an increase in the production of guns in the U.S., particularly in southern states bordering Mexico, and, if this, in turn, led to an increase in the illegal availability of weapons in Mexico, and consequently to an increase in homicide. In addition to examining country-wide trends, we test the theoretical expectation that there was a pattern of distance decay from the U.S.–Mexican border. Our findings suggest that changes to gun policy in the U.S. did increase the supply of firearms at the Mexican border, which increased opportunities for trafficking into Mexico, and that there was a clear association between firearm availability and homicide rates. The analyses are thus consistent with the hypothesis that variation (across space and time) in illegal firearm availability in Mexico provides a parsimonious explanation for the observed variation in state-level homicide rates. These findings are observed after accounting for factors associated with traditional explanations of violence.