IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v112y2022i3p827-60.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does Race Matter for Police Use of Force? Evidence from 911 Calls

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Hoekstra
  • CarlyWill Sloan

Abstract

This paper examines race and police use of force using data on 1.6 million 911 calls in two cities, neither of which allows for discretion in officer dispatch. Results indicate White officers increase force much more than minority officers when dispatched to more minority neighborhoods. Estimates indicate Black (Hispanic) civilians are 55 (75) percent more likely to experience any force, and five times as likely to experience a police shooting, compared to if White officers scaled up force similarly to minority officers. Additionally, 14 percent of White officers use excess force in Black neighborhoods relative to our statistical benchmark.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Hoekstra & CarlyWill Sloan, 2022. "Does Race Matter for Police Use of Force? Evidence from 911 Calls," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(3), pages 827-860, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:112:y:2022:i:3:p:827-60
    DOI: 10.1257/aer.20201292
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20201292
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E143541V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20201292.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20201292.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aer.20201292?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Arnold & Will Dobbie & Crystal S Yang, 2018. "Racial Bias in Bail Decisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(4), pages 1885-1932.
    2. Kate Antonovics & Brian G. Knight, 2009. "A New Look at Racial Profiling: Evidence from the Boston Police Department," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 163-177, February.
    3. Goldin, Claudia D. & Rouse, Cecilia, 2000. "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of “Blind†Auditions on Female Musicians," Scholarly Articles 30703974, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    4. David Neumark & Roy J. Bank & Kyle D. Van Nort, 1996. "Sex Discrimination in Restaurant Hiring: An Audit Study," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(3), pages 915-941.
    5. Gordon B. Dahl & Enrico Moretti, 2008. "The Demand for Sons," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(4), pages 1085-1120.
    6. Grogger, Jeffrey & Ridgeway, Greg, 2006. "Testing for Racial Profiling in Traffic Stops From Behind a Veil of Darkness," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 101, pages 878-887, September.
    7. Ayres, Ian & Siegelman, Peter, 1995. "Race and Gender Discrimination in Bargaining for a New Car," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 304-321, June.
    8. Shamena Anwar & Hanming Fang, 2006. "An Alternative Test of Racial Prejudice in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 127-151, March.
    9. Francis X. Flanagan, 2018. "Race, Gender, and Juries: Evidence from North Carolina," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(2), pages 189-214.
    10. Jan Feld & Nicolás Salamanca & Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2016. "Endophilia or Exophobia: Beyond Discrimination," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(594), pages 1503-1527, August.
    11. Christopher A. Parsons & Johan Sulaeman & Michael C. Yates & Daniel S. Hamermesh, 2011. "Strike Three: Discrimination, Incentives, and Evaluation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1410-1435, June.
    12. Nicola Persico & Petra Todd, 2006. "Generalising the Hit Rates Test for Racial Bias in Law Enforcement, With an Application to Vehicle Searches in Wichita," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(515), pages 351-367, November.
    13. Joseph Price & Justin Wolfers, 2010. "Racial Discrimination Among NBA Referees," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1859-1887.
    14. Gary Chamberlain, 1980. "Analysis of Covariance with Qualitative Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(1), pages 225-238.
    15. Emily K. Weisburst, 2019. "Police Use of Force as an Extension of Arrests: Examining Disparities across Civilian and Officer Race," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 109, pages 152-156, May.
    16. Shamena Anwar & Patrick Bayer & Randi Hjalmarsson, 2012. "The Impact of Jury Race in Criminal Trials," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(2), pages 1017-1055.
    17. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Jonah E. Rockoff, 2014. "Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2593-2632, September.
    18. Cecilia Rouse & Claudia Goldin, 2000. "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 715-741, September.
    19. Roland G. Fryer Jr., 2019. "An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(3), pages 1210-1261.
    20. Efron, Bradley, 2004. "Large-Scale Simultaneous Hypothesis Testing: The Choice of a Null Hypothesis," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 99, pages 96-104, January.
    21. William C. Horrace & Shawn M. Rohlin, 2016. "How Dark Is Dark? Bright Lights, Big City, Racial Profiling," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(2), pages 226-232, May.
    22. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    23. Ridgeway, Greg & MacDonald, John M., 2009. "Doubly Robust Internal Benchmarking and False Discovery Rates for Detecting Racial Bias in Police Stops," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 104(486), pages 661-668.
    24. Lavy, Victor, 2008. "Do gender stereotypes reduce girls' or boys' human capital outcomes? Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 2083-2105, October.
    25. Samantha Bielen & Wim Marneffe & Naci H. Mocan, 2018. "Racial Bias and In-group Bias in Judicial Decisions: Evidence from Virtual Reality Courtrooms," NBER Working Papers 25355, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. d'Este, Rocco & Yuchtman, Noam, 2023. "Correcting Racial Injustice: Forensic DNA Technology and the Exoneration of the Wrongfully Convicted," IZA Discussion Papers 16076, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. He, Wenjian & Wang, Xiaodong & Miao, Miao, 2024. "Network infrastructure and corporate environmental performance: Empirical evidence from “Broadband China”," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    3. Lange, Andreas & Miniesy, Rania & Nicklisch, Andreas & Rabie, Dina & Bock, Olaf & Ross, Johannes, 2023. "Sharing norms and negotiations across cultures: Experimental interactions within and between Egypt and Germany," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 412-440.
    4. Ferrazares, Toshio, 2024. "Monitoring Police with Body-Worn Cameras: Evidence from Chicago," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    5. Nayoung Rim & Roman Rivera & Andrea Kiss & Bocar Ba, 2020. "The Black-White Recognition Gap in Award Nominations," Working Papers 2020-065, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    6. David Bjerk, 2022. "Does greater police funding help catch more murderers?," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 19(3), pages 528-559, September.
    7. Julia Godfrey & Kegon Teng Kok Tan & Mariyana Zapryanova, 2023. "The Effect of Parole Board Racial Composition on Prisoner Outcomes," Working Papers 2023-011, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    8. Lieberman, Carl, 2024. "Variation in racial disparities in police use of force," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    9. Celislami, Elda & Kastoryano, Stephen & Mastrobuoni, Giovanni, 2023. "Strategic Bureaucratic Opacity: Evidence from Death Investigation Laws and Police Killings," IZA Discussion Papers 16609, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Li Li & Haoming Liu, 2024. "The minimum wage and cross-community crime disparities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 37(2), pages 1-37, June.
    11. Campbell, Travis, 2024. "Black Lives Matter’s effect on police lethal use of force," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    12. Brendon McConnell, 2022. "Racial Sentencing Disparities and Differential Progression Through the Criminal Justice System: Evidence From Linked Federal and State Court Data," Papers 2203.14282, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2022.
    13. Saltiel, Fernando & Tuttle, Cody, 2022. "Business Cycles and Police Hires," IZA Discussion Papers 15665, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Harvey, Anna & Mattia, Taylor, 2024. "Reducing racial disparities in crime victimization: Evidence from employment discrimination litigation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    15. Makofske, Matthew, 2020. "Pretextual Traffic Stops and Racial Disparities in their Use," MPRA Paper 121003, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 29 Jul 2023.
    16. Desmond Ang & Panka Bencsik & Jesse Bruhn & Ellora Derenoncourt, 2021. "Police violence reduces civilian cooperation and engagement with law enforcement," Working Papers 2021-005, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    17. Jens Ludwig & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2021. "Fragile Algorithms and Fallible Decision-Makers: Lessons from the Justice System," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(4), pages 71-96, Fall.
    18. Makofske, Matthew, 2020. "Pretextual Traffic Stops and Racial Disparities in their Use," MPRA Paper 100792, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Batkeyev, Birzhan & DeRemer, David R., 2023. "Mountains of evidence: The effects of abnormal air pollution on crime," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 288-319.
    20. Miner-Romanoff, Karen, 2023. "Bigs in Blue: Police officer mentoring for middle-school students—Building trust and understanding through structured programming," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    21. Monica C. Bell, 2021. "Next-Generation Policing Research: Three Propositions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(4), pages 29-48, Fall.
    22. Fernando Saltiel & Cody Tuttle, 2023. "Business Cycles and Police Hires," Working Papers 288, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    23. Nemschoff, Danielle, 2022. "An evaluation of Crisis-Intervention Team (CIT) training," MPRA Paper 114948, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    24. Claudia Williamson Kramer, 2023. "Individualism and racial tolerance," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 197(3), pages 347-370, December.
    25. Francesco Barilari & Diego Zambiasi, 2023. "Political Campaigning, and Racial Discrimination in Arrests for Drugs," Trinity Economics Papers tep0223, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lieberman, Carl, 2024. "Variation in racial disparities in police use of force," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    2. Nayoung Rim & Roman Rivera & Andrea Kiss & Bocar Ba, 2020. "The Black-White Recognition Gap in Award Nominations," Working Papers 2020-065, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    3. Shi, Ying & Zhu, Maria, 2022. "Equal time for equal crime? Racial bias in school discipline," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    4. Abrahams, Scott, 2020. "Officer differences in traffic stops of minority drivers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    5. Kevin Lang & Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer, 2020. "Race Discrimination: An Economic Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 68-89, Spring.
    6. Makofske, Matthew, 2020. "Pretextual Traffic Stops and Racial Disparities in their Use," MPRA Paper 121003, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 29 Jul 2023.
    7. J. Aislinn Bohren & Alex Imas & Michael Rosenberg, 2019. "The Dynamics of Discrimination: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(10), pages 3395-3436, October.
    8. Makofske, Matthew, 2020. "Pretextual Traffic Stops and Racial Disparities in their Use," MPRA Paper 100792, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Mujcic, Redzo & Frijters, Paul, 2013. "Still Not Allowed on the Bus: It Matters If You're Black or White!," IZA Discussion Papers 7300, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Raymond Fisman & Daniel Paravisini & Vikrant Vig, 2017. "Cultural Proximity and Loan Outcomes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(2), pages 457-492, February.
    11. David Neumark, 2018. "Experimental Research on Labor Market Discrimination," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(3), pages 799-866, September.
    12. Julia Godfrey & Kegon Teng Kok Tan & Mariyana Zapryanova, 2023. "The Effect of Parole Board Racial Composition on Prisoner Outcomes," Working Papers 2023-011, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    13. Nikoloz Kudashvili & Philipp Lergetporer, 2019. "Do Minorities Misrepresent Their Ethnicity to Avoid Discrimination?," CESifo Working Paper Series 7861, CESifo.
    14. Anwar Shamena & Fang Hanming, 2012. "Testing for the Role of Prejudice in Emergency Departments Using Bounceback Rates," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(3), pages 1-49, December.
    15. Nicolás Grau & Damián Vergara, "undated". "A Simple Test for Prejudice in Decision Processes: The Prediction-Based Outcome Test," Working Papers wp493, University of Chile, Department of Economics.
    16. Felipe Goncalves & Steven Mello, 2021. "A Few Bad Apples? Racial Bias in Policing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(5), pages 1406-1441, May.
    17. Eren, Ozkan, 2023. "Potential in-group bias at work: Evidence from performance evaluations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 296-312.
    18. Benjamin Feigenberg & Conrad Miller, 2020. "Racial Disparities in Motor Vehicle Searches Cannot Be Justified by Efficiency," NBER Working Papers 27761, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Georgios Georgiou, 2017. "Are oral examinations objective? Evidence from the hiring process for judges in Greece," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 217-239, October.
    20. Jesse Kalinowski & Matthew B. Ross & Stephen L. Ross, 2017. "Endogenous Driving Behavior in Tests of Racial Profiling in Police Traffic Stops," Working papers 2017-03, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2020.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H76 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Other Expenditure Categories
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:112:y:2022:i:3:p:827-60. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.