IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedcwq/97293.html

Black Mayors and Crime

Author

Listed:
  • Craig Sylvera

Abstract

Local elections are often contested on the grounds of public safety, but do elected officials have any power to curb crime? Black mayors have particular interest in the issue because Black communities are victimized by high levels of crime and fragile police community relations. Using data on elections of first-time Black mayors, I find that police forces add more Black officers, a finding that is especially true for mayors with executive authority. Officers arrest 48 fewer potential Black offenders per 10,000 Black residents for crimes where they have the ability to exercise discretion, a finding that is commensurate with the overall reduction in crime. This effect is not visible for similar white arrests. Using changes in the levels of arrests and officers induced by pivotal Black elections, I then estimate the correlation of an additional officer on race-specific arrests. An additional Black officer is related to large reductions in discretionary Black arrests, perhaps suggesting increasing the presence and visibility of Black officers may offer a solution to the “over-policing, under-policing” problem Black communities tend to face.

Suggested Citation

  • Craig Sylvera, 2023. "Black Mayors and Crime," Working Papers 23-27, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedcwq:97293
    DOI: 10.26509/frbc-wp-202327
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.26509/frbc-wp-202327
    File Function: Persistent Link
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.clevelandfed.org/-/media/project/clevelandfedtenant/clevelandfedsite/publications/working-papers/2023/wp2327_updated.pdf
    File Function: Full Text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.26509/frbc-wp-202327?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fernando Ferreira & Joseph Gyourko, 2009. "Do Political Parties Matter? Evidence from U.S. Cities," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(1), pages 399-422.
    2. Manasi Deshpande & Yue Li, 2019. "Who Is Screened Out? Application Costs and the Targeting of Disability Programs," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 213-248, November.
    3. Giovanni Facchini & Brian Knight & Cecilia Testa, 2025. "The Franchise, Policing, and Race: Evidence from Arrests Data and the Voting Rights Act," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 134-154, October.
    4. Sun, Liyang & Abraham, Sarah, 2021. "Estimating dynamic treatment effects in event studies with heterogeneous treatment effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 175-199.
    5. Amalia R Miller & Carmit Segal, 2019. "Do Female Officers Improve Law Enforcement Quality? Effects on Crime Reporting and Domestic Violence," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(5), pages 2220-2247.
    6. 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.
    7. Logan, Trevon D., 2020. "Do Black Politicians Matter? Evidence from Reconstruction," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(1), pages 1-37, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Craig Sylvera, 2025. "Black Mayors and Black Communities," Working Papers 25-07, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    2. Elisa Facchetti, 2026. "Police infrastructure, police performance, and crime: evidence from austerity cuts," IFS Working Papers W24/16, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    3. Nemschoff, Danielle, 2022. "An evaluation of Crisis-Intervention Team (CIT) training," MPRA Paper 114948, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Kim, Taeho, 2025. "Facilitating police reform: Body cameras, police-involved homicides, and law enforcement outcomes," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 248(C).
    5. Bas Scheer & Wiljan van den Berge & Maarten Goos & Alan Manning & Anna Salomons, 2022. "Alternative Work Arrangements and Worker Outcomes: Evidence from Payrolling," CPB Discussion Paper 435, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    6. Guignet, Dennis & Jenkins, Robin R. & Belke, James & Mason, Henry, 2023. "The property value impacts of industrial chemical accidents," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    7. Lorenzo Neri & Elizabetta Pasini & Olmo Silva, 2024. "The organizational economics of school chains," CEP Discussion Papers dp1993, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    8. Costa-Font, Joan & Raut, Nilesh, 2025. "Long-term care partnership effects on Medicaid and private insurance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 127078, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Rafat Mahmood & Pushkar Maitra, 2026. "When Protection Fails: Disasters and Violence Against Women," Monash Economics Working Papers 2026-06, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    10. Yu‐Chin Hsu & Shu Shen, 2024. "Dynamic regression discontinuity under treatment effect heterogeneity," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(4), pages 1035-1064, November.
    11. Arne J. Nagengast & Yoto V. Yotov, 2025. "Staggered Difference-in-Differences in Gravity Settings: Revisiting the Effects of Trade Agreements," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 271-296, January.
    12. Brehm, Johannes & Pestel, Nico & Schaffner, Sandra & Schmitz, Laura, 2025. "From Low Emission Zone to academic track: Environmental policy effects on educational achievement in elementary school," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    13. Hannah Klauber & Felix Holub & Nicolas Koch & Nico Pestel & Nolan Ritter & Alexander Rohlf, 2024. "Killing Prescriptions Softly: Low Emission Zones and Child Health from Birth to School," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 220-248, May.
    14. Bernardus Van Doornik & David Schoenherr & Janis Skrastins, 2025. "Escaping Death: individual mobility and female mortality," Working Papers Series 621, Central Bank of Brazil, Research Department.
    15. Li, Pei & Liu, Kaihao & Lu, Yi & Peng, Lu, 2025. "Organizing regulatory structure and local air quality: Evidence from the environmental vertical management reform in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 139-164.
    16. Lipowski, Cäcilia & Salomons, Anna & Zierahn-Weilage, Ulrich, 2024. "Expertise at work: New technologies, new skills, and worker impacts," ZEW Discussion Papers 24-044, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    17. Deng, Liuchun & Müller, Steffen & Plümpe, Verena & Stegmaier, Jens, 2024. "Robots, occupations, and worker age: A production-unit analysis of employment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    18. Chen, Jidong & Shi, Xinzheng & Zhang, Ming-ang & Zhang, Sihan, 2024. "Centralization of environmental administration and air pollution: Evidence from China," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    19. Frattini, Federico Fabio, "undated". "Political Participation and Competition in Concurrent Elections: Evidence from Italy," FEEM Working Papers 359333, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    20. Ohyun Kwon & Hao Zhao & Min Qiang Zhao, 2025. "The reallocation effect of emissions cap‐and‐trade: Evidence from China," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 58(4), pages 1311-1337, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedcwq:97293. 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: 4D Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbclus.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.