A Tale of Force: Examining Policy Proposals to Address the Issue of Police Violence

• In Event: 4155 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 11. Police Use of Force

Abstract

President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recommended that police forces increase officer demographic diversity and raise educational requirements for new officers, as well as implement community policing strategies. The goal of these policy recommendations were to reduce police violence and improve police community relationships, particularly within minority communities. These recommendations were not, however, grounded in empirical research. We estimate simple cross-sectional models regressing two measures of police department use of force on indicators of community policing, officer education, and officer racial diversity to examine the plausibility of these recommendations. We find that police forces with more college-educated officers are less violent toward citizens, but that the race and sex compositions of officers is not associated with the counts of police violence. Ironically, most indicators of community policing are associated with more police violence, although a higher proportion of community beat officers is associated with lower levels of violence.

Author

• Kayla A. Preito-Hodge, University of Massachusetts-Amherst