RT Article
T1 Neck-restraint bans, law enforcement officer unions, and police killings
JF Criminology & public policy
VO 23
IS 3
SP 663
OP 688
A1 Beck, Brenden
A2 Antonelli, Joseph
A2 LaScala-Gruenewald, Angela
LA English
YR 2024
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1902414888
AB Research Summary Following high-profile police killings, many U.S. cities banned officers from using chokeholds and other neck restraints. The evidence for such bans, however, is limited. To test whether use-of-force policies prohibiting neck restraints are related to fewer police killings, we use three modeling approaches to analyze 2183 U.S. cities between 2009 and 2021. Police killings were lower in places that adopted neck-restraint bans and the bans were associated with less crime and fewer assaults on officers, net of controls. Because officer labor unions can affect use-of-force policies and the frequency of police killings, we also analyzed them, finding unionization increased the likelihood a city had a neck-restraint ban and had a null or negative association with police killings. Policy Implications Adopting a neck-restraint ban is likely an effective way to reduce deaths due to police use of force with minimal collateral consequences. The bans operate through a diffuse discouragement of many types of lethal force or as a part of an array of use-of-force policies. Their direct relationship to asphyxiation deaths remains unclear. Officer unionization is unlikely to change the frequency of police killings, except through its association with stricter use-of-force policies.
K1 administrative regulations
K1 chokeholds
K1 neck restraints
K1 police killings
K1 police unions
K1 Use of force
DO 10.1111/1745-9133.12658