IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/palcom/v4y2018i1d10.1057_s41599-018-0110-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Resolution of apparent paradoxes in the race-specific frequency of use-of-force by police

Author

Listed:
  • Cody T. Ross

    (Ecology and Culture. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)

  • Bruce Winterhalder

    (University of California)

  • Richard McElreath

    (Ecology and Culture. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology)

Abstract

Analyses of racial disparities in police use-of-force against unarmed individuals are central to public policy interventions; however, recent studies have come to apparently paradoxical findings concerning the existence and form of such disparities. Although anti-black racial disparities in U.S. police shootings have been consistently documented at the population level, new work has suggested that racial disparities in encounter-conditional use of lethal force by police are reversed relative to expectations, with police being more likely to: (1) shoot white relative to black individuals, and (2) use non-lethal as opposed to lethal force on black relative to white individuals. Encounter- and use-of-force-conditional results, however, can be misleading if the rates with which police encounter and use non-lethal force vary across officers and depend on suspect race. We find that all currently described empirical patterns in the structuring of police use-of-force—including the “reversed” racial disparities in encounter-conditional use of lethal force—are explainable under a generative model in which there are consistent and systemic biases against black individuals. If even a small subset of police more frequently encounter and use non-lethal force against black individuals than white individuals, then analyses of pooled encounter-conditional data can fail to correctly detect racial disparities in the use of lethal force. In more technical terms, statistical assessments of racial disparities conditioned on problematic intermediate variables, such as encounters, which might themselves be a causal outcome of racial bias, can produce misleading inferences. Population-level measures of use-of-force by police are more robust indicators of the overall severity of racial disparities than encounter-conditional measures—since the later neglect the differential morbidity and mortality arising from differential encounter rates. As such, population-level measures should be used when evaluating the local-level public health implications of racial disparities in police use-of-force. Research on encounter-conditional use-of-force by police can also fruitfully contribute to public policy discussions, since population-level measures alone cannot address whether racial disparities are driven by disparities in encounters or disparities in use-of-force conditional on encounters. Tests for racial biases in the encounter-conditional use of lethal force, however, must account for individual-level variation across officers in terms of race-specific encounter rates or risk falling to Simpson’s paradox.

Suggested Citation

  • Cody T. Ross & Bruce Winterhalder & Richard McElreath, 2018. "Resolution of apparent paradoxes in the race-specific frequency of use-of-force by police," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(1), pages 1-9, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:pal:palcom:v:4:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-018-0110-z
    DOI: 10.1057/s41599-018-0110-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-018-0110-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41599-018-0110-z?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roland G. Fryer, Jr, 2016. "An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force," NBER Working Papers 22399, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Judea Pearl, 2014. "Comment: Understanding Simpson's Paradox," The American Statistician, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 68(1), pages 8-13, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Riddell, Jordan R. & Worrall, John L., 2021. "Predicting firearm and CEW displays as police officers' response to resistance," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    2. Abrahams, Scott, 2020. "Officer differences in traffic stops of minority drivers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    3. Marilyn D Thomas & Alexis N Reeves & Nicholas P Jewell & Eli K Michaels & Amani M Allen, 2021. "US law enforcement policy predictors of race-specific police fatalities during 2015–16," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-17, June.
    4. Stansfield, Richard & Aaronson, Ethan & Okulicz-Kozaryn, Adam, 2021. "Police use of firearms: Exploring citizen, officer, and incident characteristics in a statewide sample," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    5. Mitchell, Jeffrey & Chihaya, Guilherme Kenji, 2022. "Tract level associations between historical residential redlining and contemporary fatal encounters with police," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 302(C).
    6. Simckes, Maayan & Willits, Dale & McFarland, Michael & McFarland, Cheryl & Rowhani-Rahbar, Ali & Hajat, Anjum, 2021. "The adverse effects of policing on population health: A conceptual model," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 281(C).
    7. Wilkes, Rima & Karimi, Aryan, 2023. "Multi-group data versus dual-side theory: On race contrasts and police-caused homicides," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 327(C).
    8. Carolyn Greene & Marta-Marika Urbanik & Kanika Samuels-Wortley, 2022. "“It Stays with You for Life”: The Everyday Nature and Impact of Police Violence in Toronto’s Inner-City," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(17), pages 1-11, August.

    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. Esteban M. Aucejo & Jonathan James, 2019. "Catching up to girls: Understanding the gender imbalance in educational attainment within race," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(4), pages 502-525, June.
    2. Fort, Margherita & Ichino, Andrea & Rettore, Enrico & Zanella, Giulio, 2022. "Multi-cutoff RD designs with observations located at each cutoff: problems and solutions," CEPR Discussion Papers 16974, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Nolan Kopkin, 2019. "Where and When Police Use Deadly Force: a County-Level Longitudinal Analysis of Fatalities Involving Interaction with Law Enforcement," Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, Springer, vol. 2(3), pages 150-162, September.
    4. Ajilore, Olugbenga, 2017. "Is There a 1033 Effect? Police Militarization and Aggressive Policing," MPRA Paper 82543, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Ulrich Daepp & Pamela Gorkin & Karl Voss, 2017. "Quiz 1: What Color Was George Washington’s White Horse? The Mathematical Version," The Mathematical Intelligencer, Springer, vol. 39(4), pages 9-17, December.
    6. David E. Bloom & Mathew McKenna & Klaus Prettner, 2018. "Demography, Unemployment, Automation, and Digitalization: Implications for the Creation of (Decent) Jobs, 2010–2030," NBER Working Papers 24835, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Matt E. Ryan, 2020. "The heat: temperature, police behavior and the enforcement of law," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 187-203, April.
    8. David Arnold & Will Dobbie & Crystal S Yang, 2018. "Racial Bias in Bail Decisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(4), pages 1885-1932.
    9. Daniel Możdżyński & Wojciech Cellary, 2022. "Determinants of the Acceptance of Mobile Payment Systems by E-Merchants," Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations (JECO), IGI Global, vol. 20(1), pages 1-23, January.
    10. Ingrid Gould Ellen & Stephen L. Ross, 2018. "Race and the City," Working papers 2018-03, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    11. Insler, Michael A. & McMurrey, Bryce & McQuoid, Alexander F., 2019. "From broken windows to broken bonds: Militarized police and social fragmentation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 43-62.
    12. Yin, Fang & Sun, Zhanli & You, Liangzhi & Müller, Daniel, 2024. "Determinants of changes in harvested area and yields of major crops in China," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 16(2), pages 339-351.
    13. Winkelmann Rainer, 2024. "Neglected Heterogeneity, Simpson’s Paradox, and the Anatomy of Least Squares," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 131-144, January.
    14. Young Woong Park & Glenn B. Voss & Zannie Giraud Voss, 2023. "Advancing customer diversity, equity, and inclusion: Measurement, stakeholder influence, and the role of marketing," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 51(1), pages 174-197, January.
    15. Alexander, Adam C. & Chen, Weiyu & Ward, Kenneth D., 2018. "Is intelligence associated with mortality from lethal force by law enforcement?," Intelligence, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 30-35.
    16. Amanda Geller, 2017. "Policing America's Children: Police Contact and Consequences Among Teens in Fragile Families," Working Papers wp18-02-ff, Princeton University, School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..
    17. Lundberg, Alexander, 2019. "Leniency Can Increase Deterrence," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    18. Olugbenga Ajilore, 2017. "Mental health, race, and deadly use of force," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 37(1), pages 423-428.
    19. Fawley-King, Kya & Trask, Emily V. & Ferrand, John & Aarons, Gregory A., 2020. "Caregiver strain among biological, foster, and adoptive caregivers caring for youth receiving outpatient care in a public mental health system," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    20. Tomas Macak, 2021. "Stability of Dependencies of Contingent Subgroups with Merged Groups: Vaccination Case Study," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(22), pages 1-12, November.

    More about this item

    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:pal:palcom:v:4:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-018-0110-z. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.nature.com/ .

    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.