Do Consent Decrees Reduce the Use of Force? Evidence from Police Reports and Hospital Records

• In Event: Police Deviance and Understanding Misconduct

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Justice increasingly relies on court ordered consent decrees to manage municipal police departments, often intervening to reduce police use of force against the public. Previous evaluations of the efficacy of these oversight actions rely on reports provided by the agencies under scrutiny. Using panel data analysis and synthetic case-control methods, we examine both police reports and hospital admittance records to evaluate the efficacy of one such intervention. We also examine the extent to which our two data sources converge and propose strategies for validating law enforcement agencies' use of force reporting with public health data.

Authors

• Steven Briggs, North Dakota State University

• Daniel Pemstein, North Dakota State University