Essays on the Politics of Policing

Abstract

This dissertation project attempts to contribute to a revival of political scientists' engagement with the study of policing. It asks how political dynamics -- including public opinion, election turnout patterns, interest groups, and bureaucratic agency incentives -- shape policing policy, and how policing policy in turn shapes these political dynamics. Each of the three essays that make up this dissertation focus on a discrete, narrow research questions that is part of a much broader constellation of pressing questions about the politics of policing. In the first essay, co-authored with Michael Sances (University of Memphis) and Hye Young You (New York University), we take up the question of whether police collection of fees, fines, and civilly forfeited assets affects the quality of other police functions (namely, whether or not it affects the rate at which police clear violent and property crimes). A second essay examines police officers as street-level bureaucrats, focusing on how they exercise their discretion. I use a new, detailed data set of over 2,500 residential burglaries in Tucson, Arizona to investigate to which types of burglaries police devote the most investigative resources. A third essay considers public opinion of the police, with a focus on the demographic determinants of attitudes toward policing.