Variation in Racial Disparities in Police Use of Force

By Carl Lieberman

I examine how racial disparities in police use of force vary using new data covering every municipal police department in New Jersey. Along the intensive margin of force, I find disparities that disfavor Black subjects and are larger at higher force levels, even after adjusting for incident-level factors and using new techniques to limit selection bias. I then extend empirical Bayes methods to estimate department-specific racial disparities and observe significant differences across and within these hundreds of departments. Finally, I find that certain municipal factors are useful predictors of whether a department has a large racial disparity against Black civilians, but the most informative variables can change when considering different levels of force. These findings suggest that ignoring heterogeneity in police use of force misrepresents the problem and masks the existence of both departments with very large disparities and those without apparent disparities against Black civilians, but the variation even within departments may make identifying and treating inequitable departments difficult.

Washington, DC: Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau , 2022. 71p.