Inequality in the Provision of Police Services: Evidence from Residential Burglary Investigations
研究了警察在住宅入室盗窃调查中的服务提供是否因受害者或社区特征而异，发现调查的彻底性主要取决于是否破门而入，而破门概率因社区不同，导致看似中立的破案率最大化策略产生不平等后果。
When crime victims call the police for help, what type of response do they receive? While scholars have extensively documented racial inequalities in the police’s punitive functions, this paper considers the police as service providers. It leverages uniquely granular data on over 2,500 residential burglary investigations in Tucson, Arizona, to consider the predictors of investigative thoroughness. Contrary to conventional wisdom about police behavior, the demographics of victims or officers do not consistently predict investigative thoroughness. Instead, the most important predictor of investigative thoroughness is whether the burglary involved a forced entry into the residence, since forced-entry cases feature more evidence and thus provide greater likelihood of case clearance. However, the probability of forced entry differs significantly by neighborhood, which means that the seemingly neutral decision to maximize clearance rates has unequal consequences.