Estimating the Risk of Police-involved Death by Race and Place

• In Event: 3471 - Race, Racism, and Health: Patterns and Processes

Abstract

This study estimates rates of police-involved death by race and place in the United States. We use crowdsourced police-involved fatality data to construct Bayesian models that estimate fatality risk for Black, Latinx and White men for US counties by region and metro type. We estimate that police in the US are involved, on average, in 4.5 deaths per day. Model results show that Black adult male fatality risk is between 2.2 and 2.8 deaths per 100,000 per year, Latinx risk is between 1.0 and 1.5, White risk is between 0.8 and 0.9, and total adult male fatality risk is between 1.1 and 1.3 deaths per 100,000 per year. Risk is highly geographically variable. These results show that risk of death in an encounter with police is sensitive to race and place. New methods can quantify fatality risk and uncertainty with relatively sparse crowdsourced data. Efforts to address unequal exposure to police violence should take regional and local variation into account. Such efforts can lead to more targeted place-based interventions to reduce racial disparities in police-involved deaths.

Authors

• Frank Edwards, Cornell University

• Michael Hughes Esposito, University of Washington

• Hedwig Eugenie Lee, Washington University-St. Louis