Police, Public and Community Violence: Exploring the Relationships Between Use of Deadly Force, Law Enforcement Killed, and Homicide Rates in the United States
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: This research utilizes a structural vector-autoregression that analyzes the intertemporal relationship between the number of use of deadly force incidents, number of law enforcement officers killed, and the national homicide rate in the United States. The analysis finds support for two hypotheses: (1) Unexpected increases in law enforcement killed are associated with increases in homicide rates in future months; and (2) Unexpected increases in homicide rates are associated with increases in the number of law enforcement officers killed in future months. Unexpected spikes in law enforcement killed may signal a general weakening of the police as a formal mechanism of social control, leading to increased rates of fatal violence. On the other hand, a shock to the homicide rate associated with an increase in the number of law enforcement officers killed might be explained by a shift in national-level structural factors that increase the likelihood of fatal violence, which eventually includes the murder of officers.
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3046315438