Collective Bargaining Rights, Policing, and Civilian Deaths

Arbeitspapier

Do collective bargaining rights for law enforcement result in more civilian deaths at the hands of the police? Using an event-study design, we find that the introduction of duty to bargain requirements with police unions has led to a significant increase in non-white civilian deaths at the hands of police during the late twentieth century. We find no impact on various crime rate measures and suggestive evidence of a decline in police employment, consistent with increasing compensation. Our results indicate that the adoption of collective bargaining rights for law enforcement can explain approximately 10 percent of the total non-white civilian deaths at the hands of law enforcement between 1959 and 1988. This effect is robust to a contiguous county approach, accounting for heterogeneity in treatment timing, and numerous other specifications. While the relationship between police unions and violence against civilians is not clear ex-ante, our results show that the popular notion that police unions exacerbate police violence is empirically grounded.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 14208

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination ; Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law ; Public Sector Labor Markets ; Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining: Public Policy
• Subject: police unions ; policing ; deaths by legal intervention ; collective bargaining ; discrimination

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Cunningham, Jamein ; Feir, Donna ; Gillezeau, Rob
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2021

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/236239
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET