|
Use of force in blacks versus whites
| From the website of the 'National Bureau of Economic Research': |
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.
| You can download a PDF from the website or have the file mailed to you. The NYT spin is here, from which I quote: |
Mr. Fryer found that, in tense situations, officers in Houston were about 20 percent less likely to shoot suspects if the suspect were black. This estimate was not very precise, and firmer conclusions would require more data. But, in a variety of models that controlled for different factors and used different definitions of tense situations, Mr. Fryer found that blacks were either less likely to be shot or there was no difference between blacks and whites.
| Comes as a surprise, huh... |
the results do not mean that the general public’s perception of racism in policing is misguided. Lethal uses of force are exceedingly rare. There were 1.6 million arrests in Houston in the years Mr. Fryer studied. Officers fired their weapons 507 times. What is far more common are nonlethal uses of force.
And in less extreme uses of force, Mr. Fryer found ample racial differences, which is in accord with the public’s perception and other studies.
| What the good Mr. Fryer did not answer (and to be fair to him, his study could not answer), is whether the use of force was justified. Further, while he accounts for demographic differences, from my first quick review it's not clear that he's adjusted his demographics for the known conundrum of more blacks being on the receiving end of the justice system. But it's an interesting paper to read, and Mr. Fryer should be commended for looking at primary data, and further for starting with a hypothesis and data rather than with a conclusion. |
Posted by: Steve White 2016-07-12 |
