myAIPMThe role of officer race and gender in police-civilian interactions in Chicago
Bocar A. Ba, Dean Knox, Jonathan Mummolo and Roman Rivera | Science
“We show that Black officers are less likely to stop, arrest, and use force against civilians, especially Black civilians, relative to white officers. These disparities are driven by reduced discretionary stops and arrests for petty crimes, including drug offenses, which have long been thought to fuel mass incarceration (1). By contrast, Black officers’ violent crime enforcement is only slightly lower than white officers’. Hispanic officers display lower levels of enforcement activity than whites overall, but their behavior toward Hispanic civilians is broadly comparable to that of white officers, a pattern that deserves further investigation with more fine-grained data on this ethnic group. We also find substantial differences in the behavior of female officers—both relative to male officers generally and within racial and ethnic groups— with the most substantial differences pertaining to use of force. The vast majority of gendered reductions stem from a reduced focus on arresting and using force against Black civilians.”
Read more
The role of officer race and gender in police-civilian interactions in Chicago, Bocar A. Ba, Dean Knox, Jonathan Mummolo and Roman Rivera, Science, 2021