Does a Helping Hand Put Others at Risk?: Affirmative Action, Police Departments, and Crime

Abstract

Will increasing the number of minority and women police officers make law enforcement more effective by drawing on abilities that have gone untapped, or will standards have to be lowered too far before large numbers of minorities and women can be hired? Using cross-sectional time-series data for over 200 U.S. cities for 1987, 1990, and 1993, I find that increases in the percent of minority police officers increase crime rates, but this apparently arises because lower hiring standards involved in recruiting more minority officers reduces the quality of both new minority and new nonminority officers. The most adverse effects of these hiring policies have occurred in the most heavily black populated areas. There is no consistent evidence that crime rates rise when more women are hired, and this raises questions about whether norming tests or altering their content to create equal pass rates is preferable. The paper examines how the changing composition of police departments affects such measures as the murder of and assaults against police officers.

JEL Classification: J72, K14, H42