From Defund to Refund the Police : An Empirical Analysis of Resource Allocation in the Police Service

Abstract

Social science disciplines have used decision theory and game theory to offer empirical understanding and analysis of individual behavior. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and the demand to defund the police, this thesis develops a principal-agent model that explores whether or not reducing police budgets affects racist behavior in the police force. Also, the framework of Becker’s social loss function (1968) is utilized to measure the total social loss of having racist police in the community. Finally, county crime rates in the United States are often associated with the socioeconomic resources of counties and the distribution of these resources in neighboring counties. This thesis applies spatial econometric techniques to test spatial dependence of police spending, social program expenditures and other socioeconomic characteristics. The analysis concludes that there are spatial autocorrelation and an association between crime rate and neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage. However, police budgeting is not a decision factor to develop optimal policies that can combat racist behavior in the police force.