Examining Local Budgets Following the "Defund the Police" Protests

• In Event: Policy Change: Impacts on and of Policing and Corrections

Abstract

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 45-year-old Black man, was murdered after the use of a questionable chokehold by Derek Chauvin, an officer for the Minneapolis Police Department. In the days and weeks that followed Floyd’s death, social justice protests grew in every state in the country. One of the most consistent slogans chanted at these protests was “Defund the Police,” an argument rooted in the belief that local budgets should shift or re-prioritize funding from the legal system (e.g. police, courts, corrections) to other social institutions, such as education, healthcare, and social welfare programs. In this paper, we merge city- and county-level data from the Crowd Counting Consortium and the 2021-2022 Annual Survey of Government Finances to answer the following research questions : (1) did cities/counties with more “Defund the Police” protests reduce their spending on police/corrections/courts in 2021?; (2) did cities/counties with more “Defund the Police” protests increase their spending on other social programs in 2021?; (3) does the relationship between protest activity and funding changes vary by levels of local crime of violence (overall and during protests)?

Authors

• David Michael Ramey, Penn State University

• Ali Oladimeji Shodunke, The Pennsylvania State University