Do Female Officers Improve Law Enforcement Quality? Effects on Crime Reporting and Domestic Violence

Amalia Miller and Carmit Segal

The Review of Economic Studies, 2019, vol. 86, issue 5, 2220-2247

Abstract: We study the impact of the integration of women in U.S. policing between the late 1970s and early 1990s on violent crime reporting and domestic violence (DV). Along these two key dimensions, we find that female officers improved police quality. Crime victimization data reveal that as female representation increases among officers in an area, violent crimes against women in that area, and especially DV, are reported to the police at significantly higher rates. There are no such effects for violent crimes against men or from increases in the female share of civilian police employees. Furthermore, increases in female officer shares are followed by significant declines in rates of intimate partner homicide and non-fatal domestic abuse. These effects are all consistent between fixed effects models with controls for economic and policy variables and models that focus exclusively on increases in female police employment driven by externally imposed affirmative action plans following litigation for employment discrimination.

Keywords: Women in policing; Occupational sex segregation; Crime reporting; Domestic violence; Intimate partner homicide; Affirmative action; Employment discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H76 I12 I18 J12 J16 J78 K14 K31 K42 N92 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (57)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:restud:v:86:y:2019:i:5:p:2220-2247.

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