Crime Minimization and Racial Bias: What Can We Learn From Police Search Data?

Jeff Dominitz () and John Knowles ()
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John Knowles: Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: John Knowles () and John A. Knowles

PIER Working Paper Archive from Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania

Abstract: Are variations in the success rate of searches by race informative about racial bias if police are motivated by crime minimization rather than success-rate maximization? We show that the basic idea of extracting information from hit rates may still be valid, provided one can verify some simple restrictions on the joint distribution of criminality by race. We also extend these results to the case where the police minimize the rate of unpunished crime.

JEL-codes: K42 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-02-18
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Related works:
Journal Article: Crime minimisation and racial bias: what can we learn from police search data? (2006)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pen:papers:05-019

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