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  3. American Economic Review
  4. December 2002
  5. Racial Profiling, Fairness, and Effectiveness of Policing

Racial Profiling, Fairness, and Effectiveness of Policing

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Abstract

Citizens of two groups may engage in crime, depending on their legal earning opportunities and on the probability of being audited. Police audit citizens. Police behavior is fair if both groups are policed with the same intensity. We provide exact conditions under which forcing the police to behave more fairly reduces the total amount of crime. These conditions are expressed as constraints on the quantile-quantile plot of the distributions of legal earning opportunities in the two groups. We also investigate the definition of fairness when the cost of being searched reflects the stigma of being singled out by police.

Citation

Persico, Nicola. 2002. "Racial Profiling, Fairness, and Effectiveness of Policing ." American Economic Review, 92 (5): 1472-1497. DOI: 10.1257/000282802762024593

JEL Classification

  • J15 Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
  • J78 Labor Discrimination: Public Policy
  • J71 Labor Discrimination
  • K42 Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law