Evidence of Donor Bias in Chicago Police Stops

Angela Zorro Medina, David Hackett, Devin Green and Robert Vargas

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: This study provides the first empirical evidence that private donations to police departments can influence officer behavior. Drawing on the psychology of reciprocity bias, we theorize that public donations create social debts that shape discretionary enforcement. Using quasi-experimental data from Chicago, we find that after 7-Eleven sponsored a police foundation gala, investigatory stops, particularly of Black pedestrians, increased around its stores. These findings reveal a racialized pattern of donor bias in policing and call into question the consequences of private donations to public law enforcement.

Date: 2025-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.15140 Latest version (application/pdf)

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:arx:papers:2504.15140

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().