“Police Liability Insurance Models, Risk, and the Neoliberal Governance of Police Violence”

• In Event: 50614 - Organizations as Legal Actors

Abstract

In this paper, I provide empirical case studies examining the three extant insurance models for regulating police behavior. I examine self-insurance in Minneapolis, the League of Minnesota Cities insurance risk pool, which is comprised of over 800-member cities statewide that each pay a premium to the League (instead of to a private insurance company), and private commercial insurance coverage of the small Minnesota city of Hermantown. This paper illuminates how key stakeholders approach and perceive regulating police behavior via insurance and risk management strategies and how they present these existing insurance models to the public. It also highlights the disparity in civil justice by geography that results when victims’ families pursuing civil claims receive vastly different payout amounts depending on the type of insurance model indemnifying police liability in their case. I conclude with a discussion of the sociological and public policy implications of my findings in the context of the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement and police accountability era, and in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, and propose avenues for future research.

Author

• Stephen Wulff, University of Tennessee-Knoxville