Methodological Challenges for Research on Racial Bias in Police Shootings

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Murphy, James P.

Contributor:

Neil, Roland

Paige, Jessica Welburn

Language:

English

Place of Publication:

RAND Corporation 2024

Summary:

Police in the United States shoot people at far higher rates than police in other economically developed countries. The victims of these shootings are disproportionately Black and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic, compared with those groups' shares of the population. These shootings occur in a society that continues to grapple with its oftentimes racist history, one that, to this day, remains beset with pervasive racial inequality. In this report, the authors discuss methodological and data challenges for studying racial bias in police shootings and implications for assessing available evidence (as of early 2024) on this topic. They explore the importance of thinking of racial bias as a process with a series of stages, the data that are available to study bias in shootings, the main methods that have been used and their limitations, and how researchers ought to proceed to arrive at stronger and more-informative conclusions.