Abstract
While the public debates whether law enforcement has a problem with mis- or over-using force, the field lacks critical information concerning how often officers use force in their dealings with citizens. Consequently, the various reforms proposed have little evidence supporting them. Using data from Mapping Police Violence combined with census and LEOKA data, we examine the impact of U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence and the restrictions that each state placed on law enforcement’s ability to use force and what constituted reasonable force within each state. We found that while the state’s population size and violent crime rate were consistently strong predictors of the number and rate of officer-involved deaths, the state legal restrictions on use of force had negligible effects. This has important implications for discussions around reforming use of force in the U.S
Department/Program
Criminal Justice
Submission Type
in-person poster
Date
4-5-2024
Rights
Copyright the Author(s)
Recommended Citation
Steele, Morgan J. and Qi, Ziwei
(2024)
"The Impact of State Laws on Officer-Involved Deaths (OIDs),"
SACAD: John Heinrichs Scholarly and Creative Activity Days: Vol. 2024, Article 91.
Available at:
https://scholars.fhsu.edu/sacad/vol2024/iss2024/91
Included in
Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons, State and Local Government Law Commons