American Economic Review Vol. 111 No. 5 2021
A Few Bad Apples? Racial Bias in Policing
Abstract
We estimate the degree to which individual police officers practice racial discrimination. Using a bunching estimation design and data from the Florida Highway Patrol, we show that minorities are less likely to receive a discount on their speeding tickets than White drivers. Disaggregating this difference to the individual police officer, we estimate that 42 percent of officers practice discrimination. We then apply our officer- level discrimination measures to various policy-relevant questions in the literature. In particular, reassigning officers across locations based on their lenience can effectively reduce the aggregate disparity in treatment
- DOI
- 10.1257/aer.20181607
- Volume
- 111
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1406-1441
- Language
- en
- Sources
- openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref