A fascinating article written by my UCLA Public Policy School colleague. The Police Force’s Size and the Civilian RaceThis is the draft from Benjamin Hansen, Aaron Chalfin, Emily K. Weisburst, Morgan C. Williams, Jr. This is a subject I don’t know much about, but it’s something I wanted to share.
Background:
While there is now a strong consensus in the academic literature that the number of police officers (McCrary, 2002; Evans and Owens, 2007; Chalfin and McCrary, 2018; Mello, 2019; Weisburst, 2019b) combined with their presence and visibility (Sherman and Weisburd, 1995; Di Tella and Schargrodsky, 2004; Klick and Tabarrok, 2005; Braga et al., 2014; MacDonald et al., 2016; Weisburd, 2016) reduces crime, whether the effect of additional law enforcement is heterogeneous across Black and white Americans remains a surprisingly open question…. Using national data on police employment for a sample of 242 large U.S. cities over a 38-year period, this research provides novel evidence on the racial differences in public safety returns to law enforcement expansion in the United States….
Homicide statistics:
Our research shows that every additional police officer hire reduces the number of murders by 0.06 to 0.01. [per year] …. It is estimated that investments in the police force could save one life for between $1.6-$2.7 million. That’s far below what it takes to calculate the statistical value of an individual life. These figures are usually higher than $7 million.
The total decrease in homicides is approximately equal for white and black victims. However, per capita the drop in murders is doubled for Black victims. {Black civilians have a greater impact on the homicide victimization rate if there is more police officers per capita (0.006 − 0.012 homicides per 100,000 population [for each officer per year]() is higher than that for white civilians (0)..002 − 0.008 homicides per 100,000 population). The per capita racial disparity in the effect of police force size on homicide victimization is significant … (p < 0.001).}
{On average, individuals living in the cities in our sample are 24% non-Hispanic Black, 19% Hispanic, and 49% non-Hispanic white…. There are 234 homicide victims per year in an average city. Of these, 138 (57%) were not Hispanic Black, and 64 (26%) are non-Hispanic. Nationally, approximately half of homicide victims are Black—the proportion in our sample is slightly higher as we focus on large cities. In per capita terms, Black residents are approximately 4 times as likely to be the victim of a homicide compared to white residents….}
Quality of Life Arrest Findings:
The next step is to examine the impact of police investments on civil interaction with the criminal system or “net widening”. We will be concentrating our attention on differences between police officers’ race. We find that police investments lead to higher total low-level arrests. Each additional officer makes 7-22 arrests. This is due to an increase in drug possession and liquor violations, which means that these arrests have a 2.5-3x greater impact on Black civilians.
{[W]Although the estimated racial gap isn’t significant at standard levels, it is still conservative. Hispanic arrestees were overwhelmingly considered white due to limitations in arrest data. As research indicates important Hispanic-white disparities with respect to policing outcomes (Sanga, 2009), the white estimate which includes Hispanic arrestees estimate is likely to be larger than the non-Hispanic white estimate.}
{We note that there are many avenues that could be explored to address the racial disparities in police enforcement burdens. Consistent with our finding that the racially disparate effects of investments in police manpower are particularly large for drug possession arrests, the decriminalization of the possession of small amounts of drugs may be a particularly promising avenue for reducing racial disparities.}
These are the results of serious “index crime” (murder, robbery aggravated assault burglary grand theft and vehicle theft).
We also find that the number of arrests for serious crimes (so-called index crimes) falls with the increase in police personnel. {Weisburst and Owens (2007, Kaplan and Chalfin 2019), and prior literature show that an average of 18-24 index crimes are abated by each officer. This suggests an index crime-to-police elasticity of approximately -1. Since larger police forces lead to reductions in index crimes, the decline in index crime arrests that we observe suggests that larger police forces reduce serious crime primarily through deterrence rather than by arresting and incapacitating additional offenders (Nagin, 2013; Chalfin and McCrary, 2017; Kaplan and Chalfin, 2019).}
We find that arrests of Black suspects are affected by a decline in index-crime arrests on a per-capita basis. This is consistent with our belief that police recruitment can generate a “double dividend” for Black and White Americans (Bratton 2011; Cook & Ludwig 2011; Durlauf & Nagin 2011). It will result in lower crime rates and more arrests for serious crimes.
The author’s comments about the wider policy implications
We have estimates that capture Historical Controls that ensure municipal spending are fixed will reduce the opportunity cost associated with policing. Our findings suggest that “defunding” police could lead to more murders, particularly among Black victims.
A reduction in police funding might allow for increased funding of other options. There is a lot of evidence that suggests crime can be controlled in certain situations, other than through policing and its sub-product, incarceration. There are many options to police, including place-based methods like increasing trees and greenspace (Branas (2011)), restoring vacant lots and public-private partnerships with (Cook and MacDonald 2011), street lighting and Doleac and Sanders (2015), Chalfin (2018), and decreasing physical disorder (Sampson et. al. 2001; Keizer (2008)). There is also evidence that social service-based strategies such as summer jobs for disadvantaged youth (Heller, 2014; Gelber et al., 2016; Davis and Heller, 2017), cognitive behavioral therapy (Blattman et al., 2017; Heller et al., 2017), mental health treatment (Deza et al., 2020; Jácome, 2020) and local non- profits more generally (Sharkey et al., 2017) can have important crime-reducing effects. It is not always easy to scale social service interventions (Mofiitt (2006); Ludwig et. al. (2011)), but there are increasing numbers of studies that show ways to reduce crime other than the traditional Becker model (1968).
It is still unclear whether communities should spend less on law enforcement, and more in other strategies. This material shift in society’s approach towards public safety has not been implemented to scale. Our research focuses on one crucial aspect of this policy debate—the effect of reducing police employment—an outcome which would likely result if proposals to reduce funding for municipal police departments are adopted in the future. The study estimates the historic trade-offs between investments in law enforcement, and the implications that this could have for communities of color.
Hiring police officers may increase the death rate of blacks, but the study also notes that hiring officers “excludes” the possibility.[s]Homicides that are committed in prisons and jails along with felons murdered in the commission or commission of a criminal offense as such will be included in the legal definition for “justifiable killing”. (And it is possible, of course, that some of these “felons murder in commission or commission of a criminal offence” were in fact innocent. You might also be able to decrease this number by, for example, reducing arrests for serious index offenses. This could lead to more police shootings.
However, it is unlikely that this factor will affect the overall findings of this study. For example, in 2020, 241 African-Americans were killed by police officers (as opposed to 457 Whites), which corresponds to a national average about 0.5 for every 100,000 people. Even if these shootings had a positive correlation with more police officers in the area, it is unlikely that this correlation would be masked by the 0.006-0.012 percent per 100,000. Per police officer The study shows a decline in the number of homicides. The study found that there were 9,913 black victims of murder in America, compared with 7,029 for whites.