How Neighborhood Inequalities Shape Police Misconduct Redress: Findings from an Impact Evaluation of Chicago Police Reforms

• In Event: Race, Ethnicity, and Civil Law

Abstract

A substantial body of research has documented persistent racial disparities in police misconduct complaint substantiation rates in the United States. Yet, only a small portion of quantitative work on the topic has looked beyond race as an attribute of individual complainants and officers which leaves the critical structural dimensions and impacts of neighborhood context largely unexamined. This paper asks whether the racial composition and socioeconomic conditions of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) beat where an incident is reported to have taken place independently predict the likelihood of that complaint being sustained, and examines whether neighborhood context helps explain racial disparities in outcomes that have long been attributed primarily to complainant and officer characteristics. Drawing on over 20,000 closed civilian complaints against Chicago Police Department (CPD) officers filed between 2013 and 2021, merged with beat-level American Community Survey data, I find evidence of a significant “majority-white beat effect”. Preliminary parametric and non-parametric models indicate that complaints filed about incidents in majority-white beats are more likely to be sustained regardless of complainant race. I also find neighborhood economic disadvantage indicators to be independently associated with lower sustain rates. These findings support a small but growing body of evidence about the impact of structural determinant on not just the occurrence of police misconduct, but also its adjudication.

Author

• Michelle Shames, Northwestern University