2020 was a year of racial reckoning for America. The killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police officers presented us with the harsh reality of the role that systemic racism plays in our legal and law enforcement systems and the reform that is needed to address its root causes. A new study published in the journal Science suggests an answer: more diversity in law enforcement.
Although activists have spent decades calling for the hiring of more nonwhite and female police officers as a way to reform law enforcement, there had been little research to back up these claims. “It’s a system that very clearly needs reforming, we just haven’t had good data on what reforms work,” explained Dean Knox, University of Pennsylvania data scientist and co-author of the study. And this data is hard to come by. For the paper, researches spent three years fighting the Chicago Police Department for access to detailed data, even appealing some of their requests to the Illinois Attorney General’s Office. They were finally able to amass data on 1.6 million enforcements, including stops and attests, by nearly 7,000 police officers between 2012 and 2015.
The study analyzed nearly 3 million Chicago PD patrol assignments and compared officers working in similar areas. The results yielded a clear difference across demographics. Compared to white officers, Black and Hispanic officers made far fewer stops and arrests and were less likely to use force, especially against Black civilians. Over the course of 100 shifts, for example, Black officers made an average of 16 fewer stops and two fewer arrests than their white counterparts in comparable scenarios—a 20% to 30% reduction. Additionally, the study found that female officers used force less often than their male counterparts.
“We see two groups of officers going out, and they’re treating the same group of civilians differently,” Knox said, “it’s troubling.” The study accounted for the type of offenses committed. While most officers, regardless of demographics, responded the same way to violent crimes like armed robberies or assault, the disparities between officers were most pronounced when handling minor crimes, like traffic violations or drug possession, when officers have more discretion to make a decision. In recent years, police response to minor crimes have been the driving force behind protests against police brutality, as was the case with George Floyd’s killing.
Although the study confirms what activists have argued for many years, it has its limitations. For one, the data was collected from 2012-2015, and therefore does not capture recent changes to policing nor the department’s internal culture, which influences how recruits go on to behave in the field. And as a case study of Chicago, it is also not generalizable to the rest of the country, particularly law enforcement agencies in suburban and rural areas.
Nonetheless, the study shows a clear relationship between diversity and better policing. Increasing diversity among law enforcement, along other reforms pushed by community activists like body cameras and greater consequences for police brutality, can begin to reshape our country’s law enforcement agencies to ensure they protect all Americans.