Do civilian complaints against police get punished?

Gregory DeAngelo (), Matthew Gomies () and Rustam Romaniuc ()
Additional contact information
Gregory DeAngelo: Claremont Graduate University
Matthew Gomies: Claremont Graduate University
Rustam Romaniuc: Montpellier Business School

Public Choice, 2023, vol. 196, issue 3, No 11, 453-482

Abstract: Abstract Law enforcement institutions are tasked with a complicated undertaking that involves maintaining community safety and, at times, making arrests while exercising care in their interaction with private citizens. Errors may have dramatic consequences for civilians, police and the criminal justice system. Given limited observability of law enforcement agents’ behavior, one way to mitigate the principal-agent problem is to rely on signals from civilians via complaints. At the same time, civilian complaints may result in reputational and financial losses for the criminal justice institutions. This paper empirically investigates one way in which criminal justice institutions respond to civilian complaints. Namely, criminal prosecutors can upcharge a defendant who files a civil complaint against law enforcement. By upcharging, the prosecutor can increase the likelihood that a defendant will accept a plea deal, thus preventing the defendant from seeking monetary damages in civil court (Heck vs. Humphrey, 1994). Using data on citizen complaints and criminal charge outcomes from Cook County (Illinois), we find a strong causal link between a citizen filing a complaint and the total number of charges filed.

Keywords: Private and public enforcement; Civilian complaints; Police misconduct; Upcharging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 D73 K14 K40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11127-023-01052-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:196:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s11127-023-01052-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-023-01052-1

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().