Abstract
Is there evidence of a Black–White disparity in death by police gunfire in the United States? This is commonly answered by comparing the odds of being fatally shot for Blacks and Whites, with odds benchmarked against each group’s population proportion. However, adjusting for population values has questionable assumptions given the context of deadly force decisions. We benchmark 2 years of fatal shooting data on 16 crime rate estimates. When adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-Black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects. Multiverse analyses showed only one significant anti-Black disparity of 144 possible tests. Exposure to police given crime rate differences likely accounts for the higher per capita rate of fatal police shootings for Blacks, at least when analyzing all shootings. For unarmed shootings or misidentification shootings, data are too uncertain to be conclusive.
Original language | English (US) |
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Journal | Social Psychological and Personality Science |
DOIs | |
State | Accepted/In press - Jan 1 2018 |
Keywords
- Black Lives Matter
- deadly force
- fatal shootings
- officer-involved shootings
- police use of force
- race bias
- racial disparity
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology
- Clinical Psychology
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Dive into the research topics of 'Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Use of Deadly Force? Analyses of Officer-Involved Fatal Shootings in 2015–2016'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Datasets
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Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Use of Deadly Force? Analyses of Officer-Involved Fatal Shootings in 2015–2016
Cesario, J. (Creator), Johnson, D. J. (Creator) & Terrill, W. (Creator), Figshare, 2018
DOI: 10.25384/sage.c.4140611, https://sage.figshare.com/collections/Is_There_Evidence_of_Racial_Disparity_in_Police_Use_of_Deadly_Force_Analyses_of_Officer-Involved_Fatal_Shootings_in_2015_2016/4140611
Dataset
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Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Use of Deadly Force? Analyses of Officer-Involved Fatal Shootings in 2015–2016
Cesario, J. (Creator), Johnson, D. J. (Creator) & Terrill, W. (Creator), figshare SAGE Publications, 2018
DOI: 10.25384/sage.c.4140611.v1, https://figshare.com/collections/Is_There_Evidence_of_Racial_Disparity_in_Police_Use_of_Deadly_Force_Analyses_of_Officer-Involved_Fatal_Shootings_in_2015_2016/4140611/1
Dataset
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Supplemental Material, SPPS775108_suppl_mat - Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Use of Deadly Force? Analyses of Officer-Involved Fatal Shootings in 2015–2016
Terrill, W. (Contributor), Johnson, D. J. (Contributor) & Cesario, J. (Contributor), figshare SAGE Publications, Jul 1 2019
DOI: 10.25384/sage.6633314.v1, https://doi.org/10.25384%2Fsage.6633314.v1
Dataset