Race, Inequality and Criminal Justice Policy
Paper Session
Friday, Jan. 7, 2022 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (EST)
- Chair: Alberto Ortega, Indiana University
The Impact of Income Inequality on Police Contact and Crime
Abstract
We explore the extent to which income inequality influences crime, police contact, and police related fatalities. Recent research has shown that income inequality is associated with increases in police expenditures; however, this increase could be a desire to deal with the social ills typically correlated with rising inequality. We combine information on inequality and crime to examine the relationship between inequality and public safety outcomes. Using an instrumental variables approach, we find evidence that income inequality is associated with increases in police expenditures, reaffirming previous research from Boustan et. al (2013). However, counter to the prevailing literature, we find that inequality is negatively related to homicide victimization, crime, arrests, and police killings of civilians.The Effects of Female Incarceration on Racial Differences in Foster Care
Abstract
Racial disparities in foster care placements have narrowed considerably since 2000. One of the observed trends that coincide with the narrowing of racial disparities in foster care placements is the narrowing of racial differences in female incarceration rates. We exploit the timing of a set of Federally-led, comprehensive reviews of each state’s child welfare systems (Children and Family Service Reviews -CFSRs) to estimate the causal impacts of changes in black and white female incarceration rates on out-of-home placements and foster care. The CFSRs evaluate state child welfare practice conformance with federal standards and are implemented in different states in different years. The fact that the reviews are essentially random permits us to test for effects of changes in female incarceration rates on foster care placement rates before and after the cross-state time variation in the implementation of reviews. We adopt both a difference-in-difference and a two-step estimator to identify the causal impacts of changes in female incarceration rates on racial differences in foster care placements.Where Statutory Inequality Meets Social Inequality: Racial Disparities in Arrests and the Imposition of Monetary Sanctions in California
Abstract
Monetary sanctions – fines, fees, assessments, interest, restitution orders, and other financial costs – are routinely imposed on individuals convicted of criminal offenses. Despite burgeoning scholarship on monetary sanctions in America, much of our knowledge about legal financial obligations (LFOs) is restricted to the penal codes of a few states. Yet, there is reason to believe that a wider expanse of statutory codes harbor and levy fines and fees on defendants convicted of criminal offenses. In this paper, we investigate how racial disparities in monetary sanctions have their antecedents in a state’s legal capacity (i.e., the corpus of law) and agency enforcement powers. By combining a unique dataset created to assess LFOs in California’s 29 Legislative Code sections with statewide administrative data on arrest and court records, we assess how the selective enforcement of legal capacity by state agents produces racial disparities in arrests and, ipso facto, monetary sanctions. Findings from our work speak to the importance of assessing patterns of criminal justice sequencing (arrest) and their relation to the statutory embeddedness of LFOs within the broader corpus of law, particularly as state and county governments create policies to overhaul monetary sanctions and new procedures to scale back policing and surveillance powers.Discussant(s)
Cody Tuttle
,
Princeton University
Marcus Casey
,
University of Illinois-Chicago
Chantal Smith
,
Washington and Lee University
Luisa Blanco
,
Pepperdine University
JEL Classifications
- K4 - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior
- J1 - Demographic Economics