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Learning the Ropes: General Experience, Task-Specific Experience, and the Output of Police Officers

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  • Gregory DeAngelo

    (West Virginia University, Department of Economics)

  • Emily G. Owens

    (University of Pennsylvania, Department of Criminology)

Abstract

We estimate the role that law enforcement officer experience has on the probability of punishment, using a unique data set of tickets issued by the Idaho State Police linked to human resource records. All else equal, officers issue fewer tickets earlier in their career than later in their career. Quasi-exogenous shocks to an officer’s task-specific experience, generated by law changes, cause a temporary reduction in the frequency with which a subset of troopers “use†those laws, creating disparities in the likelihood that individual citizens are cited for law violations. The reduction in ticketing in response to a law change is largest for newer troopers, and law changes later in a trooper’s career have a smaller effect on his use of that law.

Suggested Citation

  • Gregory DeAngelo & Emily G. Owens, 2017. "Learning the Ropes: General Experience, Task-Specific Experience, and the Output of Police Officers," Working Papers 17-19, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    • Handle: RePEc:wvu:wpaper:17-19
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    Cited by:

    1. DeAngelo, Gregory & Owens, Emily G., 2017. "Learning the ropes: General experience, task-Specific experience, and the output of police officers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 368-377.
    2. Gregory DeAngelo & Bryan C. McCannon, 2020. "Psychological game theory in public choice," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(1), pages 159-180, January.
    3. Abrahams, Scott, 2020. "Officer differences in traffic stops of minority drivers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    4. DeAngelo Gregory J. & Ross Amanda & Gittings R. Kaj, 2018. "Police Incentives, Policy Spillovers, and the Enforcement of Drug Crimes," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 14(1), pages 1-29, March.
    5. Evan M. Calford & Gregory DeAngelo, 2023. "Ambiguity and enforcement," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(2), pages 304-338, April.

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