Estimating Effects of Affirmative Action in Policing: A Replication and Extension

Maryah Garner, Anna Harvey and Hunter Johnson

International Review of Law and Economics, 2020, vol. 62, issue C

Abstract: Many police departments in the United States have experienced externally-imposed affirmative action plans designed to increase the shares of nonwhite and female police officers. This paper examines whether externally-imposed affirmative action plans have impacted the rates of reported offenses and/or offenses cleared by arrest, seeking to replicate and extend Lott (2000) and McCrary (2007). Using a series of modern econometric strategies, including difference-in-differences decomposition and generalized synthetic controls, we do not find a significant effect of court-imposed affirmative action plans on the rates of reported offenses or reported offenses cleared by arrest, a finding consistent with McCrary (2007). We also consider whether unlitigated agencies change their practices due to the threat of litigation, but, like McCrary (2007), are unable to identify causal evidence of such threat effects. We suggest that, in the spirit of Miller and Segal (2018), future research seek to estimate the potentially racially heterogeneous treatment effects of race-based affirmative action plans on public safety outcomes.

Keywords: Affirmative Action; Crime; Policing; Employment Discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H76 J15 J78 K31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:irlaec:v:62:y:2020:i:c:s0144818819302686

DOI: 10.1016/j.irle.2019.105881

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