The Effect of Court-Ordered Hiring Quotas on the Composition and Quality of Police
American Economic Review · 2007 · Volume 97 · Issue 1
Abstract
Arguably the most aggressive affirmative action program ever implemented in the United States was a series of court-ordered racial hiring quotas imposed on municipal police departments. My best estimate of the effect of court-ordered affirmative action on work-force composition is a 14-percentage-point gain in the fraction African American among newly hired officers. Evidence on police performance is mixed. Despite substantial black-white test score differences on police department entrance examinations, city crime rates appear unaffected by litigation. However, litigation lowers slightly both arrests per crime and the fraction black among serious arrestees. (JEL H76, J15, J78, K31)
Keywords
State and Local Government: Other Expenditure Categories, Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants, Non-labor Discrimination, Labor Discrimination: Public Policy, Labor Law, Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
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