An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fryer, Roland G.
• 署名单位: Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/701423
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 1210-1261
• 关键词: motor-vehicle searches; black; ECONOMICS; crime; BIAS

摘要

This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On nonlethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than 50 percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force-officer-involved shootings-we find no racial differences either in the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of whom have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.