An Economic Analysis of Black-White Disparities in the New York Police Department’s Stop-and-Frisk Program
@article{Coviello2015AnEA, title={An Economic Analysis of Black-White Disparities in the New York Police Department’s Stop-and-Frisk Program}, author={Decio Coviello and Nicola G. Persico}, journal={The Journal of Legal Studies}, year={2015}, volume={44}, pages={315 - 360} }
We introduce a model to explore the identification of two distinct sources of bias in the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program: the police officer making the stop decisions and the police chief allocating personnel across precincts. We analyze 10 years of data from the stop-and-frisk program in light of this theoretical framework. We find that white pedestrians are slightly less likely than African American pedestrians to be arrested conditional on being stopped. We interpret…
36 Citations
Using Shifts in Deployment and Operations to Test for Racial Bias in Police Stops
- LawAEA Papers and Proceedings
- 2019
We rely on a policy experiment in the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to address the well-known problems of omitted variable bias and infra-marginality in traditional outcomes tests of racial…
Does Selective Crime Reporting Influence Our Ability to Detect Racial Discrimination in the Nypd’s Stop-and-Frisk Program?
- Law, PsychologyAdvances in Econometrics
- 2019
Abstract
Prior analyses of racial bias in the New York City’s Stop-and-Frisk program implicitly assumed that potential bias of police officers did not vary by crime type and that their decision of…
Stop-and-frisk in New York City: Estimating racial disparities in post-stop outcomes
- Political Science
- 2021
Precinct or Prejudice? Understanding Racial Disparities in New York City's Stop-and-Frisk Policy
- Law
- 2015
Recent studies have examined racial disparities in stop-and-frisk, a widely employed but controversial policing tactic. The statistical evidence, however, has been limited and contradictory. We…
Data Transparency and Fairness Analysis of the NYPD Stop-and-Frisk Program
- LawACM J. Data Inf. Qual.
- 2022
Given the increased concern of racial disparities in the stop-and-frisk programs, the New York Police Department (NYPD) requires publicly displaying detailed data for all the stops conducted by…
In-Group Bias and the Police: Evidence from Award Nominations
- Law, EconomicsSSRN Electronic Journal
- 2019
This paper examines the impact of in-group bias on the internal dynamics of a police department. Prior studies have documented racial bias in policing, but little is known about bias against officers…
An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force
- LawJournal of Political Economy
- 2019
This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On nonlethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than 50 percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions…
Did Post-Floyd et al. Reforms Reduce Racial Disparities in NYPD Stop, Question, and Frisk Practices? An Exploratory Analysis Using External and Internal Benchmarks
- Law
- 2019
Various methodological approaches to constructing external and internal benchmarks have been applied to estimate racial bias in police stop, question, and frisk (SQF) patterns. We apply an external…
Does Gender Matter? Using Social Equity, Diversity, and Bureaucratic Representation to Examine Police–Pedestrian Encounters in Seattle, Washington
- LawAdministrative Theory & Praxis
- 2019
This article considers the extent to which the gender of police officers affects the likelihood that a pedestrian will be frisked following a Terry stop. Theories of social equity, organizational…
Police Stops and Searches of Indigenous People in Minneapolis: The Roles of Race, Place, and Gender
- Law, SociologyInternational Indigenous Policy Journal
- 2019
We examine disparities in police stops, searches, and arrests of Native Americans in Minneapolis, a major metropolitan area with a substantial Native American population. During the study period,…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 37 REFERENCES
An Analysis of the New York City Police Department's “Stop-and-Frisk” Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias
- Law
- 2007
Recent studies by police departments and researchers confirm that police stop persons of racial and ethnic minority groups more often than whites relative to their proportions in the population.…
An Economic Analysis of Black-White Disparities in Nypd's Stop and Frisk Program
- Economics, Law
- 2013
We analyze data on NYPD's "stop and frisk program" in an effort to identify racial bias on the part of the police officers making the stops. We find that the officers are not biased against African…
Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime: Comment
- Law
- 2002
Previous empirical studies have typically uncovered little evidence that police reduce crime. One problem with those studies is a failure to adequately deal with the simultaneity between police and…
Racial Bias in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence
- LawJournal of Political Economy
- 2001
Police checking for illegal drugs are much more likely to search the vehicles of African‐American motorists than those of white motorists. This paper develops a model of police and motorist behavior…
DISCRIMINATION DURING TRAFFIC STOPS: HOW AN ECONOMIC ACCOUNT JUSTIFYING RACIAL PROFILING FALLS SHORT
- Law
- 2012
The last decade has seen a noted increase in the amount of traffic-stop data available for researchers hoping to analyze racial profiling on America’s highways. A group of economic scholars—Knowles,…
Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Policeon Crime
- Law
- 1995
Previous empirical studies have typically uncovered little evidence that police reduce crime. One problem with those studies is a failure to adequately deal with the simultaneity between police and…
Racial Bias in Motor Vehicle Searches: Additional Theory and Evidence
- Law
- 2003
Abstract Knowles, Persico, and Todd (2001) develop a model of police search and offender behavior. Their model implies that if police are unprejudiced the rate of guilt should not vary across groups.…
POLICE SUSPICION AND DISCRETIONARY DECISION MAKING DURING CITIZEN STOPS
- Law
- 2005
This study examines the influence of racial, demographic and situational variables on types of police suspicion and the ancillary decision to stop and question suspects. Data were drawn from an…
Racial Profiling or Racist Policing ? : Testing in Aggregated Data
- Law
To what extent is the disparate impact of policing on racial minorities due to racism, rather than statistical discrimination? We extend the methodology developed by Knowles, Persico, and Todd…
Bad Cops: A Study of Career-Ending Misconduct among New York City Police Officers
- Law
- 2009
Research Summary Police scholars and public policymakers throughout generations have sought to identify reliable correlates ofpolice misconduct. Despite these efforts, general statements as to the…