Does racial congruence between police agencies and communities reduce racialized police killings of civilians?

In response to highly publicized, controversial police killings of Black Americans, policymakers and advocates have proposed several police reforms, including a recurrent, decades-long demand for police departments to diversify their forces to better match the racial composition of the communities t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Gaston, Shytierra (Author)
Contributors: Teti, Matthew J. ; Sanchez, Matheson
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2021
In: Criminology & public policy
Year: 2021, Volume: 20, Issue: 4, Pages: 665-690
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Keywords:
Policeorganization
Race and policing
Racialdisparities
Racial representation
Violence
fatal force
Description
Summary:In response to highly publicized, controversial police killings of Black Americans, policymakers and advocates have proposed several police reforms, including a recurrent, decades-long demand for police departments to diversify their forces to better match the racial composition of the communities they serve. We draw on a unique police agency-level dataset comprising 1,988 local police agencies and regress measures of police killings of Black, Hispanic, and White Americans from 2013 to 2018 onto racial congruence ratios and other theoretically relevant predictors. The results provide support for the hypothesis, revealing a negative association between racial congruence and police killings among Black and Hispanic victims.
ISSN:1745-9133
DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12567