Variation in Racial Disparities in Police Use of Force

Abstract

I examine racial disparities in police use of force using new data from New Jersey. I find that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to have more severe types of force used against them conditional on force, that these disparities persist after adjusting for an exhaustive set of factors and using new methods to limit selection bias, and that they increase with force severity. I then extend empirical Bayes methods to estimate department-specific racial differences, finding significant variation across New Jersey’s hundreds of departments. Finally, I observe that officer diversity cannot predict these departmental disparities, though income and inequality may.