Racial profiling, fairness, and effectiveness of policing

Nicola Persico

doi:10.1257/000282802762024593

Racial profiling, fairness, and effectiveness of policing

Nicola Persico^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Managerial Economics, Decision Sciences and Operations

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

66 Scopus citations

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.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	1472-1497
Number of pages	26
Journal	American Economic Review
Volume	92
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1257/000282802762024593
State	Published - Dec 1 2002

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1257/000282802762024593

Cite this

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Racial profiling, fairness, and effectiveness of policing

Abstract

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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