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raveneye · 05-30-2005, 11:48 AM

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For example, does the rate of violent crime really increase when a black officer is in a black neighborhood, or does the actual reporting of crimes increase?

chickentribs, this of course is a very good question. I recommend reading the full paper, because this and several other alternative interpretations were taken very seriously and fully considered and analyzed. The study (in my opinion) is unusually well-written and carefully executed; all the analyses are clearly, transparently described and motivated; and the data is there for anybody to replicate the analyses if they wish. Here's the section pertinent to reporting rates:

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IV. ARE HIGHER CRIME RATES A RESULT OF LESS-EFFECTIVE POLICE OR GREATER REPORTING RATES?

Unfortunately, the FBI's Uniform Crime Report Data relies on reported, not actual, crimes. The problem is potentially critical for this study, because the racial or gender characteristics of the police officers could either be altering the behavior of criminals and/or the rate at which victims report crimes. The problem is made even worse by the fact that both sides of the debate can provide explanations for the preceding results. Those favoring affirmative action can argue that the higher reported crime rates when more minorities are hired implies that the community feels more comfortable about reporting crimes. In contrast, those who believe that lower standards mainly result in less qualified officers can say that the results confirm the poor performance of the less qualified officers.

There are several ways of investigating whether the results are being driven by higher reporting rates. The simplest approach is to look at murder and manslaughter, where underreporting is essentially nonexistent. Thus, the race or sex of the police officer does not produce additional reporting. For both murder and manslaughter, the results are very consistent. More minority, black, or female officers are associated with higher murder and manslaughter rates, while more white and male officers imply fewer deaths. These two crimes are also the most accurately reported for another reason: if multiple offenses are perpetrated at the same time, only the most serious offense is reported. Thus, if an armed robbery resulted in murder, only the murder and not the robbery is recorded.

Further, the importance of the reporting problem should vary systematically across crime categories as the loss from the crime varies. For example, suppose that a black person is making a decision on whether to report a theft to a predominantly white police department. His decision to report the crime depends on the value of the item stolen, the probability that the item will be recovered, and the cost involved in going to the police station, including whatever difficulties might arise in how the black man might be treated by white police officers. The victim would only report crimes where either the value of the item stolen or the probability of recovery is relatively high. Lowering the cost of the black person reporting the crime by introducing more black officers would result in more reporting of relatively low-value, low-probability-of-detection crimes. Since the cost of making the complaint constitutes a much bigger percentage of the return to acting on relatively small harms, actions that reduce those costs have a much bigger effect on reporting minor crimes.

For at least broad categories of property crimes it is possible to make this comparison. Miller, Cohen, and Wiersema (1996) claimed that in 1992 the average larceny involved property loss of $270, burglary $970, and auto theft $3,300. By comparison, the differences in the arrest rates are small: larceny 30%, burglary 21%, and auto theft 25%. These figures would imply that the biggest increase in reporting from changing the racial mix of police should occur for larceny, next for burglary, and least for auto theft. (Auto theft and burglary should also tend to have relatively high reporting rates compared to larceny simply because these crimes must be reported as a condition of obtaining reimbursement from insurance companies.) Yet, all of the two-stage least squares estimates in Table IV indicate that the racial or gender compositions of the police department have always smaller impacts on larceny than on burglary, and half the time the impact on larceny is smaller than on auto theft. None of the estimates are consistent with the earlier results arising from increased reporting rates.