Structural Determinants of Lethal Violence By and Against the U.S. Police

In the U.S., there is a longstanding and deepening concern about the rate of homicides by and against the police and how these vary across areas and across critical demographics (such as race). This concern has led to numerous studies testing hypotheses about the differences in police-induced homicide rates by jurisdictions. Our literature review of more than fifty studies identified various samples, methods, and measures used in these studies and a lack of consistent findings for any of the tested hypotheses. This study addresses several limitations of previous studies by linking newly collected data from a representative sample of US law enforcement agencies [LEAs] with data collected for the U.S. Census and by non-governmental organizations to bring an alternative view to the debate. Several critical items provided by the LEAs are their annual counts of people shot at and shot by police officers. Using these data as dependent measures, this study re-examines frequently tested hypotheses identified by our review. Additionally, we examine the influence of changing social conditions on variations in the rate of civilian and police use of lethal force. Our analyses use multivariate regressions to produce models that explain the variations in the frequency of violence. The results uniquely show the impact of the tested factors on lethal violence rates and how these factors vary by the target.