Racial Disparities in Crime Commission Rates and Arrests Revisited

• In Event: Organizational Analysis to Explain Racialization and Other Vulnerability in Policing

Abstract

After Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson by a police officer, a series of social unrests spread out to different cities of U.S. with a claim that Blacks are disproportionately arrested compared to their representation in the population. Following Ferguson shooting, USA Today published an article stating that disproportionate arrests of Blacks are a common problem of U.S police departments. A common response from the police, however, is that they arrest people committing crimes, regardless of their color. In order to analyze this dilemma in detail, we used Cincinnati Police Department’s arrest records and employed a different method of measurement and calculation accounting for the disproportionate crime commission rates in the population. Policy implications of the study will be discussed in the conclusion section.

Authors

• Murat Ozer, University of Cincinnati

• Halil Akbas, University of Cincinnati

• Daniel Gerard, University of Cincinnati