Working Paper: NBER ID: w22399
Authors: Roland G. Fryer Jr.
Abstract: This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty 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 in either 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 which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.
Keywords: Racial Differences; Police Use of Force; Empirical Analysis
JEL Codes: J01; K0
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Police officers face convex costs of excessive use of force (K42) | No evidence of racial discrimination in officer-involved shootings (J15) |
| Nonlethal uses of force are significantly higher for Black individuals (K42) | Higher likelihood of experiencing any use of force (H56) |
| Nonlethal uses of force are significantly higher for Hispanic individuals (J15) | Higher likelihood of experiencing any use of force (H56) |
| As the intensity of force increases (Y80) | Racial differences in police use of force remain consistent (J15) |
| Blacks being involved in interactions where a weapon is drawn (K42) | Higher likelihood of experiencing any use of force (H56) |
| No racial differences in officer-involved shootings (J15) | Blacks are less likely to be shot at by police (J15) |