Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Publication Date
2019
Publication Title
Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics
Abstract
Public concern about harmful policing is surging. Governments are paying historic amounts for law enforcement liability. Has police behavior changed? Or is society responding differently? Traditional data sources struggle with this question. Common metrics conflate the prevalence and severity of policing harms with the responses of legal actors such as lawyers, judges, and juries. We overcome this problem using a new data source: liability insurance claims. Our dataset contains 23 years of claims against roughly 350 law enforcement agencies that contract with a single insurer. We find that, while lawsuits and payouts have trended upwards over the past decade, insurance claims have declined. We examine multiple potential explanations. We argue that, in our sample, police behavior is not getting worse; rather, societal responses to policing harms are intensifying. Police litigation is not representative of the broader universe of claims and adjudicated claims also differ systematically from settled ones.
Number
865
Recommended Citation
John Rappaport & Aurelie Ouss, "Is Police Behavior Getting Worse? The Importance of Data Selection in Evaluating the Police," Coase-Sandor Working Paper Series in Law and Economics, No. 865 (2019).
