Do Female and Non-white Police Executives Change Police Behavior?

• In Event: Policing the Americas

Abstract

As the public, policymakers, and scholars have increasingly called for police reform, one of the proposed solutions is to increase the diversity of police under the assumption that female and non-white police act differently than their male, white counterparts. We test this assumption among key political actors within the police, police chiefs. We create a dataset of police chiefs of all American cities from 1980 to 2020, along with a dataset of police scandals and reports of corruption and brutality. We will then explore first, the patterns in where female and non-white police chiefs are appointed; second, whether these police chiefs are more likely to be appointed when the police face accusations of corruption or scandal; and third, whether female and non-white police chiefs alter police behavior, by linking this new data with existing arrest rate information. This proposal not only has implications for the understanding of policing and police reform but also for social and political inequality, bureaucracy, demographic and substantive representation, security and defense, and democracy.

Authors

• Anna M Gunderson, University of Texas, Austin

• Laura Huber, University of Mississippi