By Lawrence W. Sherman

Police are often criticized fordoing “too much” or “too little” policing in various sit-uations. These criticisms amount to testable hypothe-ses about whether “less” force, or intensity, or enforce-ment would have been enough, or whether “more” was needed. The rise of evidence-based policing provides a starting point for public dialogues about those hypotheses, in ways that could help to build police legitimacy.Such dialogues can be focused on the questions posed by the three “Ts”: (1) Is police actiontargetedin a way that is proportionate to the harm that it can prevent?(2) Has the action been tested and found effective with the kinds of targets, and their levels of harm, where it is being used? (3) Is police actiontrack to ensure it is delivered in the way that has been tested, and in compli-ance with relevant legal requirements? In this lecture, I frame the issue as follows:Can more widespread use of better research evidence on targeting, testing, and tracking police actions, shared more clearly among the public and police, help reduce the wide range of oscillation between over-policing and under-policing?PolicyImplications:Theuseofthesequestionsinpub-lic dialogue would be especially relevant to the three biggest threats to police legitimacy in the aftermath ofGeorge Floyd’s murder: (A) police killing people, (B)police stopping people, and (C) police under-patrolling 176SHERMANhigh-crime hot spots (while over-patrolling low-crime areas). One result of applying the three-Ts questions to these threats, for example, could be the end of the vast overuse of stop and search in low-violence areas. At The same time, this approach could also lead to reduc-tions in homicide by increasing stops in highest vio-lence hot spots. Such changes could demonstrate how the “Goldilocks principle” for the three Ts could get policing closer to “just right” for each place and person being policed.

 Criminology & Public Policy.2022;21:175–196

By Nicole Gelinas

  Since mid-2020, government spending on American police departments has come under intense scrutiny nationwide. The New York Police Department (NYPD) is no exception. Leftwing critics supporting the “defund the police” movement charge that spending on police is crowding out necessary spending on civilian agencies that provide education, housing, health care, and social services. Even moderate Democrats and supposedly neutral news outlets accept the premise that police spending is either too high, relative to the rest of the city budget, or, at minimum, keeping up with the rest of the city budget. What’s missing from the “defund” argument and even from news sources is context. How large is the NYPD budget, relative to the overall city budget? How has spending on policing changed over the years and decades, relative to the entire budget? How large is uniformed-police staffing, relative to the overall city workforce? To answer these questions, this paper analyzes four decades of New York City police spending, from the recovery after the 1970s fiscal crisis through the pandemic years of the early 2020s. This paper puts spending and officer headcount in the context of the overall budget. The paper finds that operational spending on the uniformed NYPD, contrary to conventional wisdom, has shrunk substantially as a share of the city budget since the early 1980s, both in terms of spending and the size of the uniformed-officer workforce.

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2023. 13p.

By Sean Barry Butcher

Within contemporary policing and community safety discourses, citizen-led initiatives have rarely commanded the degree of attention afforded elsewhere. Typically, research has tended to focus upon state, and more recently market provision. This thesis addresses that deficit by investigating volunteer citizen patrol initiatives. It adopts an exploratory approach to conceptualise and determine the composition of patrols, and subsequently offers insights into the reasons why individuals partake in organised patrols, the nature of their activities, and how they are received by other citizens and local stakeholders. In the first half of the study, citizen patrols are defined, charted across extended historical periods, and located within the contemporary policing landscape. The second half presents the empirical findings of a qualitative study that explores three citizen patrol case studies in northern England. Data collected within these sites consisted of a total of 150 hours of participant observation and 40 semi-structured interviews, with participants, coordinators and external stakeholders. The findings indicate that despite state dominance and more recent market expansion across the policing landscape, the presence of citizen patrols illustrates a space for civil society that demonstrates continuities with the past. Participants exhibited a range of motivations for partaking and completed various activities; as responses to perceived threats, broader vulnerability, and for the purposes of information sharing. Elsewhere, a distinction emerged between those that the patrols engaged, and those that more broadly benefited. Serving the interests of the latter presented implications not only for the fair and even spread of patrol activities, but also for the delivery of policing provision more generally. Finally, the patrols were well-received by stakeholders, who connected with initiatives both strategically and operationally. There was evidence of positive relationships and collaboration, though frontline police articulated concern about their capacity to effectively support initiatives in light of reductions to personnel and resources.

  Leeds, UK: The University of Leeds, School of Law, Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, 2019. 309p.  

City and County of Denver, Officer of the Auditor  

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of the Denver Police Department’s recruitment and retention practices and determine whether it adequately uses data to assess its resources and ensure effective operations.

Background: The Denver Police Department and its more than 1,400 uniformed officers strive to keep the public safe through crime prevention and crime reduction strategies. Law enforcement agencies nationwide are struggling to hire and retain officers. This is in part because of greater scrutiny of law enforcement — and negative perceptions by the public — following events like the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020. Understaffing puts a strain on police agencies, reducing officers’ availability to respond to 911 calls and impairing their wellbeing. It also limits the time officers can spend in the community rebuilding trust and relationships with the people they serve.   \\

Denver: Office of the Auditor, City of Denver,  2023. 82p.

By Mia-Maria Magnusson

Policing research has had an upswing as the evidence-based policing movement has grown stronger and entered police practises worldwide. Within the evidence-based policing (EBP) approach, practically and academically skilled individuals, pracademics, have attracted attention as facilitating the merging of policing practice and research.

Using principles from EBP, and with a special focus on translating between policing practice, policy and research, this thesis aims to explore the characteristics of illicit drug markets with a place-based focus and to link this to the enhancement of EBP in Sweden. The theoretical base of the thesis is drawn from disorganization theory, routine activity theory and situational action theory, and these theories are combined with empirical studies from the research field of drug markets. This thesis argues for making use of pracademics to bridge the research-practice gap, a focus on ODSs, and the testing and tracking of methods such as hot spots policing, with an emphasis on properly implemented evidence-based methods and on the goals of enforcement strategies as a means of improving the effectiveness of drug-market policing.

Malmö: Malmö universitet, 2022. , p. 106

By the  U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division 

 The United States has conducted an extensive investigation of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office (OCDA) and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD), pursuant to our authority under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 34 U.S.C. § 12601 (previously codified at 42 U.S.C. § 14141). We have determined that there is reasonable cause to believe that the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department engaged in a pattern or practice of conduct—the operation of a custodial informant program—that systematically violated criminal defendants’ right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment and right to due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment. While our review focused on custodial informant activity from 2007 through 2016, the informant controversy continues to undermine public confidence in the integrity of the Orange County criminal legal system. Neither agency has implemented sufficient remedial measures to identify criminal cases impacted by unlawful informant activities or prevent future constitutional violations. This report provides a public accounting of the scope and impact of the informant program on the Orange County criminal legal system. … We focused our investigation on: (1) whether OCDA and OCSD used custodial informants to elicit incriminating statements from individuals in the Orange County Jail, after those individuals had been charged with a crime, in violation of the Sixth Amendment; and (2) whether OCDA failed to disclose exculpatory evidence about those custodial informants to criminal defendants in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. We reviewed thousands of pages of documents, made  numerous site visits to OCDA and OCSD, and conducted dozens of interviews in the course of our investigation. In particular, we conducted 17 transcribed interviews with OCDA prosecutors about specific cases they personally handled involving custodial informants. The evidence reveals that custodial informants in the Orange County Jail system acted as agents of law enforcement to elicit incriminating statements from defendants represented by counsel, and that for years OCSD maintained and concealed systems to track, manage, and reward those custodial informants. The evidence also reveals that OCDA prosecutors failed to seek out and disclose to defense counsel exculpatory information regarding custodial informants. We therefore have reasonable cause to believe that this pattern or practice of conduct by both agencies resulted in systematic violations of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.     

Washington, DC: The Author, 2022. 63p.

By The United States Commission on Civil Rights,  Minnesota Advisory Committee 

The nature and scope of the problem. There will be no end to disparate policing, and the accompanying resentment in the community, until sufficient data can be collected to better inform both policymakers and the People who elect them. Disparate policing is abusive on many levels, affecting the individuals involved, reopening unhealed wounds left by historical injustices, and reminding entire communities that their lives don’t matter. The Committee found that the lack of political will at all levels of government to enforce the limits on police conduct is the major impediment to meaningful change that would address the Constitutional violations identified in this report.  

Minneapolis:: Minnesota Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights ,2022. 62p.

Law Enforcement Conduct Commission 

Police officers are the first responders to the majority of domestic and family violence incidents that take place in New South Wales. They play a critical role in keeping victims safe, detaining, or arresting offenders and applying for protection orders. Police attend 180,000 incidents a year – or about 500 every day. This chilling number highlights how important it is for police to be well trained, well equipped and have appropriate systems in place to deal with this sadly all too common crime. The NSW Police Force estimates that 40% of police work involves responding to domestic violence. The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission used data from complaints to look at the effectiveness of NSW Police Force processes and procedures in relation to domestic and family violence incidents. We used data from complaint investigations linked to incidents involving a police officer responding to domestic and family violence incidents between 2017 and 2021. We looked at matters in which police officers were involved in domestic and family violence incidents, as well as matters in which officers were investigated for conducting inadequate investigations into reports of domestic and family violence incidents. We saw that police officers had been involved in domestic and family violence incidents, and at times were charged with domestic violence offences. We saw issues such as poor record keeping practices and police with inadequate training in how to properly investigate domestic violence incidents. The Commission has made 13 recommendations to assist the NSW Police Force to strengthen its procedures and the way it investigates complaints about domestic and family violence. Police officers play a critical role as first responders to domestic and family violence incidents. However, addressing domestic violence issues cannot be solved by the NSW Police Force alone. …As we do our work, we will look at the impact these proposed changes have on the way police respond to these incidents and any complaints made about the way they have dealt with domestic and family violence.    

Sydney: The Commission, 2023. 92p.

By  Melissa Scaia, and Rhonda Martinson,

An assessment of the Minneapolis Police Department’s response to domestic violence identified practices that put survivor safety at risk and did not hold violent offenders accountable. In 2017, a study by the Police Conduct Oversight Commission on the police response to domestic violence (DV) cases in Minneapolis documented that police officers wrote reports or made arrests in only 20% of DV calls from 2014-2016. During that time, the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) received over 43,000 DV-related calls. Concern about the findings from the Office of Police Conduct’s review 2017 report led the Office of Police Conduct Review (OPCR) to request that Global Rights for Women (GRW), in coordination with local advocacy agencies, conduct an assessment of MPD’s response to DV cases. With a length of experience in international work on violence against women as a human rights issue, the GRW team is keenly aware that domestic violence is the most common form of gender-based violence around the world. No country or community is free from this crisis, including Minneapolis. …

Minneapolis: Global Rights for Women , Minneapolis Domestic Violence Working Group,  2023. 140p.

By Paul Pazen, Steven L. Byers, Cole Anderson, and Andy Archuleta

Public safety plays a critical role in the economic vitality of a community. Increasing population, attracting new businesses, generating a workforce, and bolstering the ability to attract tourism are all directly related to real and perceived safety challenges. If people are not safe, they cannot learn, work, or enjoy their communities. Ultimately, high crime rates result in a failure to thrive. It’s no secret that Colorado has been hit with a crime wave. Skyrocketing crime rates, fentanyl deaths, and the number one rank in the country when it comes to auto thefts, are all factors that have put Colorado’s economic future at risk and made Coloradans less safe. The question this report poses is: why has Colorado become less safe? A comparison of policing and crime rates in the two largest cities in Colorado, Denver and Colorado Springs, uncovers distinctly different trends in policing and police resources that have produced differing outcomes. For example, in Denver, the crime rate increased by 32% from 2010 to 2022 while the number of uniformed police officers decreased by 15.1%. A crime case is cleared when it has been solved and the clearance rates for violent crime in Denver have dropped 18.6% at a time when the crime rate is increasing. In Colorado Springs, the crime rate decreased by 15.9% and the number of uniformed police officers rose 5.7% from 2010 to 2022. Clearance rates for violent crime increased by 9.7% while the crime rate decreased. The criminal justice system includes police who investigate crime, district attorneys who prosecute offenders, and the Department of Corrections, which keeps offenders off of the streets and facilitates the reformation and re-entry of offenders. Each of these parts plays an important and unique role in keeping Coloradans safe and is represented by one side of the “crime triangle.” Much like a triangle, when one side collapses, the system collapses.

Greenwood Village, CO: Common Sense Institute (CSI) , 2023. 38p.

By The Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty

  In this volume, we describe the various processes involved in leading and designing the Mass Casualty Commission. The mass casualty of April 18 and 19, 2020, created profound grief, disruption, and destabilization in Nova Scotia and beyond. Early in our mandate, the Commission adopted the image and metaphor of rippled water to signify the breadth and depth of the impact of what happened over approximately 13 hours on April 18 to April 19, 2020, and in the aftermath. The ripple acknowledges that the immediate impact experienced by those most affected – the individuals, families, first responders, service providers, and local communities – was appropriately the starting point of our mandate. it also captures the dynamic impact of the mass casualty, which expanded outward and affected communities, institutions, and society in Nova Scotia, across Canada, in the United States, and further afield. The Commission saw every day how the mass casualty was a source of grief, bereavement, and trauma for many individuals, families, and communities. Some members of the Commission staff and their families live in Colchester, Cumberland, or Hants counties as well as throughout Nova Scotia. While acknowledging the unique nature and depth of loss for those whose loved ones were taken, regardless of where we live, the mass casualty to varying degrees affected everyone’s sense of safety, trust, and well-being. That impact will continue long past the conclusion of our mandate. As Commissioners, we were motivated by a desire to ensure that our collective work would provide answers and make positive contributions to community safety and well-being in the future. From our first days on the job we made a series of decisions about how best to carry out our mandate with the public interest at the forefront. in line with and throughout our mandate, we invited and endeavoured to seek and respond to input from directly affected Participants in the Commission’s process, while maintaining our independence. The mandate also directed that we not express any conclusion or recommendation regarding the civil or criminal  liability of any person or organization. This direction was not unique to our inquiry; the Supreme Court of Canada has made clear that all public inquiries are prohibited by law from making any findings or conclusions regarding civil and criminal liability….

Halifax, NS: Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, 2023. 294p.

By The Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, 

  As Commissioners, we grounded our work every day in the memory of those whose lives were taken. Interacting with and learning from the individuals, families, and members of the communities most affected is an additional catalyst to the completion of our tasks. We have also been spurred on by the remarkable wisdom and generosity of everyone who contributed to our work: Participants and their counsel, witnesses (both through interviews and in public proceedings), experts, stakeholders, the media, community members, the wider public, and Commission staff. To all of you, we express our gratitude. This Report marks the end of our mandated responsibilities as a public inquiry and the shift to a shared responsibility to act. We do not absolve ourselves of obligations to contribute to the implementation of the Report’s recommendations in the days, weeks, and years to come. Yet acting on our recommendations is clearly in the hands and purview of others once the Commissioners have produced the Report. The leadership for this next phase includes those who participated in the Commission’s work; those external to the Commission, such as those who have reported on it and followed it; and others who have a formal, recognized duty to contribute to public safety and community well-being. We have said many times that this is a shared responsibility and opportunity. In Volume  6, Implementation, we expand on the importance of this collective responsibility, highlighting the significance of co-operation among politicians, policy-makers, institutions, organizations, community groups, and individuals right across society.   

Halifax, NS: Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, 2023. 83p.

 By The Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty

  in this volume, we build on the findings and conclusions reached so far by turning to the institutional context of policing. This volume addresses the policing dimensions of the following issues set out in our mandate: … (iii) interactions with police, including any specific relationship between the perpetrator and the RCMP and between the perpetrator and social services, including mental health services, prior to the event and the outcomes of those interactions, (iv) police actions, including operational tactics, response, decision-making and supervision, (v) communications with the public during and after the event, including the appropriate use of the public alerting system established under the Alert Ready program, (vi) communications between and within the RCMP, municipal police forces, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Criminal intelligence Service Nova Scotia, the Canadian Firearms Program, and the Alert Ready program, (vii) police policies, procedures and training in respect of gender-based and intimate partner violence, (viii) police policies, procedures and training in respect of active shooter incidents, … (x) policies with respect to police responses to reports of the possession of prohibited firearms, including communications between law enforcement agencies, and (xi) information and support provided to the families of victims, affected citizens, police personnel and the community  

Halifax, NS: Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, , 2023. 722p.

By The Chicago’s Use of Force Community Working Group 

 This Report from community representatives of Chicago’s Use of Force Community Working Group offers our feedback on the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) training on de-escalation and the use of force. The Working Group was first convened in the summer of 2020 in response to the requirements of the federal civil rights Consent Decree designed to bring an end to the CPD’s pattern of police brutality and racial discrimination. Over the course of two years, the Working Group persuaded the CPD to make transformative changes to its policies governing police use of force. Last fall, we issued a Public Report on CPD’s new policies, including areas still in need of change. The new policies, if implemented and enforced on the ground, have the potential to dramatically reduce unnecessary CPD violence and improve public safety. The recent murder of Tyre Nichols by members of the Memphis Police Department serves as a stark reminder of all that is at stake in Chicago. CPD’s pattern of civil rights violations, which led to the Consent Decree, persist because of a culture of violence, racism, and denial similar to the police culture that enabled officers in Memphis to believe that they could beat and kill Mr. Nichols with impunity. … 

Chicago: The Working Group, 2023. 24p.

By Citizens for a Greater Downtown St. Louis

 Among the greatest concerns of people living, working, visiting, and investing in Downtown St. Louis is public safety. Over the last decade, the character of Downtown has come to be defined not by its great architecture, live sporting events, or conventions, but by a litany of headlines describing crime, violence, and disruptive behavior. To respond to those headlines, city and civic leaders have suggested several explanations: that the recent pandemic created a vacuum of empty streets and diminished law enforcement; that increases in criminal activity are not reflected in data and are only a “perception”; and, that this is a nationwide phenomenon with other cities across the country experiencing the same problems. Some have suggested that complaints about security are a product of racism. First, the facts are undeniable; six homicides downtown in the first five months of 2023 (10 in 2022), numerous violent events, hundreds of car break-ins etc. Second, downtown residents and businesses make a choice to live or locate in a racially and culturally diverse neighborhood. That’s part of what makes Downtown special and a great place to live and work. Concerns about security are shared by neighbors of all races. As this report shows, none of those explanations are credible or helpful. While some of our public safety problems were exacerbated by the pandemic, the trends of rising crime and disorder were present years before. …

St. Louis, MO: The Authors, 20233. 15p..

By David H. Bayley

From the Exec. Summary: This report sets forth the lessons that observers and participants have learned about the process of changing police organizations so as to support democracy. It is based on the study of three bodies of literature: studies of efforts to change police practices in the developed democracies, especially in the United States; accounts ofthe experience with foreign assistance to police abroad under both bilateral and multilateral auspices; and accounts of the actions of nongovernmental human rights organizations to rectify police abuses. More than 500 books, articles, reports, and documents were reviewed in this study. The bibliography attached to this report probably encompasses the largest number of materials on efforts to change police organizations ever collected.

Washington. National Institute of Justice. 2001. 127p

By Betsy Pearl

  In recent years, a series of high-profile cases of police violence—from Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Jacob Blake—has brought to the national consciousness concerns that have been prevalent among many activists, researchers, and policymakers: What should we expect of the police? Who is responsible for public safety? And what does it mean to invest in safety beyond policing? The traditional understanding of public safety in the United States has revolved almost exclusively around policing, which is demonstrated by the size of the footprint of police agencies and their corresponding budgets. For example, the number of police officers nationwide has grown by 36 percent in two decades—from less than 700,000 officers in 1990 to more than 950,000 in 2012. As the size of American police forces grew, so too did their role in the community. “Efforts to address underlying community problems through social investment took a backseat [to] policing strategies,” noted political scientists Joe Soss and Vesla Weaver. The duties of the modern police force now extend well beyond enforcing the law, to include tasks from treating overdoses and de-escalating behavioral health crises to addressing homelessness and responding to disciplinary concerns in schools. Law enforcement now spends only a fraction of their time responding to issues of violence: American police officers make more than 10 million arrests each year, less than 5 percent of which are for serious violent crimes. The impact of police force expansion on community safety is debatable at best. While determining the cause of crime rate fluctuations is a notoriously difficult task, an analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice finds that the increase in officers had only a modest effect on crime rates in the 1990s, accounting for between 0 percent and 10 percent of the total crime reduction. Police growth continued between 2000 and 2012, with no discernible effect on crime rates. Instead, societal factors, such as growth in income, likely played a more important part in reducing crime rates during the 1990s and 2000s. Sociologist Patrick Sharkey has also analyzed factors contributing to crime reductions between 1990 and 2012, concluding that community-based organizations likely played a “substantial role in explaining the decline in violence” during this time period. In a city of 100,000 people, every new nonprofit focused on neighborhood safety and wellness was associated with an estimated 1 percent reduction in violent crime and homicide. ...

Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, 2020. 37p.

By Gabrielle T. Isaza, Robin Engel and Jennifer Calnon Cherkauskas 

Sobering centers offer a unique opportunity to reduce arrests for vulnerable populations while removing a person from a potentially dangerous situation. Despite the long and complex history of their use, little is known systematically about the effectiveness of sobering centers as an alternative to arrest. Only a handful of studies have examined the impacts of sobering centers on the criminal justice system, and these studies typically focus on a single site. To build the evidence on sobering centers, Arnold Ventures funded our research study assessing the utility of sobering centers as an alternative to arrest. This report is the first in a series detailing our multi-method and multi-site research study, launched in January 2020. In this research study, examine four primary research questions: 1. What are the patterns of policies and practices for police use of sobering centers as an alternative to arrest? What guides this decision-making? 2. What are the situational factors police use in practice to determine whether or not to use sobering centers as an alternative to arrest? 3. How do police balance and overcome policy and legal inconsistencies guiding the transport to and use of sobering centers? 4. When individuals are sent to sobering centers in lieu of arrest, does it alter their relative risk of recidivism or future contact with police? This report focuses on the quantitative findings of Phase I, disclosing the results of two national surveys—one for law enforcement agencies and one for sobering center facilities. Survey findings shed light on how police use sobering centers and the perceived benefits and barriers to their use. In turn, the survey findings also provide important insights on how to build effective partnerships and enhance the utility of sobering centers as an alternative to arrest.  

Arlington VA: National Policing Institute, 2022. 78p.

By Shani A Buggs , Daniel W Webster, Cassandra K Crifasi  

Objective To estimate the long-term impact of Safe Streets Baltimore, which is based on the Cure Violence outreach and violence interruption model, on firearm violence. Methods We used synthetic control methods to estimate programme effects on homicides and incidents of non-fatal penetrating firearm injury (non-fatal shootings) in neighbourhoods that had Safe Streets’ sites and model-generated counterfactuals. Synthetic control analyses were conducted for each firearm violence outcome in each of the seven areas where Safe Streets was implemented. The study also investigated variation in programme impact over time by generating effect estimates of varying durations for the longest-running programme sites. Results Synthetic control models reduced prediction error relative to regression analyses. Estimates of Safe Streets’ effects on firearm violence varied across intervention sites: some positive, some negative and no effect. Beneficial programme effects on firearm violence reported in prior research were found to have attenuated over time. Conclusions For highly targeted interventions, synthetic control methods may provide more valid estimates of programme impact than panel regression with data from all city neighbourhoods. This research offers new understanding about the effectiveness of the Cure Violence intervention over extended periods of time in seven neighbourhoods. Combined with existing Cure Violence evaluation literature, it also raises questions about contextual and implementation factors that might influence programme outcomes.  

  Inj Prev 2022;28:61–67  

By Elizabeth Luh  

  Biased highway troopers may intentionally misreport the race of the stopped motorists in order to evade detection. I develop a new model of traffic stops that highlights the incentive for biased troopers to misreport their failed minority searches as White. Applying my model to the universe of highway searches in Texas from 2010–2015, I find evidence of widespread bias that varies substantially across troopers. Furthermore, misreporting increased the Hispanic search success rate by 17%. When misreporting became more difficult due to public scrutiny, misreporting troopers faced worse labor outcomes. This suggests an important role for increased accountability in data collection by law enforcement agents.

Unpublished paper, 2022. 54p.