This book examines issues of race and policing through the lens of representative bureaucracy theory. According to representative bureaucracy theory, demographic correspondence between government employees and the local population can lead to more favorable outcomes for minority groups. It argues that police forces with higher minority composition will have more positive outcomes across measures such as fewer excessive force complaints and fewer fatal encounters with officers. Additionally, the book asserts that more representative forces will demonstrate responsiveness and accountability by implementing policies such as citizen review boards for excessive force complaints. It does this by first providing a brief overview of issues surrounding race and policing in America, documenting racial representation occurring in local police forces nationwide, and exploring the potential causes and consequences of underrepresentation. It concludes by discussing the implications of our findings and offer potential policy remedies and solutions that local law enforcements can pursue in order to reduce minority underrepresentation and improve policing outcomes.

I can't breathe ... a haunting phrase moaned at the intersection of past and present, serving as an audible supplement to the visual evidence to yet another collision of race and policing. This phrase reflects the current state of police-community relations in the United States. But, what lies on the other side of now? This Element examines this salient question in the context of excessive use of force and through the lenses of race, policing and public governance. We draw upon extant research and scholarship on representative bureaucracy, public engagement in the co-creation of public polices and the co-production of public services, and the emerging findings from studies in network science, coupled with insights from elite interviews, to offer implications for future research, the profession of policing, the public policymaking process, public management, and post-secondary institutions.

This dissertation investigates the relationship between bureaucratic representation of minority groups, individual administrators' decision making regarding those groups, and the performance of public organizations. In the context of law enforcement, three papers seek to answer the following questions. First, does racial/ethnic representation change the behavior of white officers when they encounter citizens of color? Second, what is the level of minority representation at which we should expect that behavioral shift to occur? Third, how do the multiple identities (i.e., race, ethnicity, and gender) of officers impact their law enforcement activities? Using data on millions of traffic stops across multiple U.S. states and years that allow one to observe both individual officer behavior and organizational characteristics, the first essay finds that white officers are more likely to treat Hispanic drivers similarly to white drivers, when working alongside more colleagues of that ethnic group. Put differently, the ethnic disparities in policing outcomes are reduced with enhanced minority representation on police force. Building upon the first essay, the second one estimates the conditions under which that observed behavioral change happens. The analysis shows that when minority officers constitute approximately 9-11 percent of the force, white officer's law enforcement activities concerning drivers of color begin to become less biased. The third essay considers multi-dimensional identities officers possess simultaneously and finds evidence of intersectionality of race, ethnicity and gender in shaping police behavior. It also finds that congruence in identities between officers and citizens, especially intersectional match, produces less disparate policing outcomes. This dissertation makes significant theoretical contributions to the scholarship on representative bureaucracy by addressing three major gap questions in that body of work. It also has important implications for policymakers and practitioners seeking to reform law enforcement and lessen racial disparities in policing in future.

Justice and Legitimacy in Policing critically analyzes the state of American policing and evaluates proposed solutions to reform/transform the institution, such as implementing body-worn cameras, increasing diversity in police agencies, the problem of crimmigration, limiting qualified immunity, and the abolitionist movement. Considering the changes that have occurred in our sociopolitical climate, policymakers, scholars, and the public are in need of a book that focuses on the American policing institution in a comprehensive yet critical manner. Each chapter is devoted to a specific area of policing that has either received criticism for the problems it may create or has been proposed to effect reform. The chapters are sequenced such that readers are introduced to a spectrum of topics to expand the discourse on changes needed to achieve equitable policing. The book also encourages readers to consider the idea that achieving justice and legitimacy in policing cannot happen as the institution is now formulated, and it invites readers to use the topics discussed in each chapter to envision transformative propositions. Justice and Legitimacy in Policing is intended to engage policymakers and practitioners as well as interested members of the public. The scope of this book also makes it a valuable resource for academics and students.

This text on representive bureaucracy covers topics such as: bureaucracy as a representative institution; bureaucratic power and the dilemma of administrative responsibility; and representative bureaucracy and the potential for reconciling bureaucracy and democracy.

This edited collection explores policing in America in regards to minority groups. The essays discuss how the relationship between police and minority groups affects politics, the economy, and minority groups’ daily lives and success. The contributors explore the Black Lives Matter movement, the Detroit, Los Angeles, and Atlanta Police Departments, immigration, incarceration, community policing, police violence, and detail causes, theories, and solutions to this important phenomenon.

Our understanding of representation by government employees has increased considerably in the past 30 years. Scholars have found that represented groups benefit from representative bureaucracies and conclude that this benefit is a function of active representation. However, due to the aggregate unit of observation used in most of these studies and the outcome measures that are typically used as dependent variables, we argue that there are other forms of representation that can explain these finding. We contribute to the existing research in this area by focusing on symbolic representation and conduct our test using individual-level data from a national police-citizen contact survey. We hypothesize that citizen perceptions of legitimacy regarding police actions are shaped by the interaction of citizen race and officer race. Our results suggest that symbolic representation does occur-blacks are more likely to perceive police actions as being legitimate if there are black officers present. Additionally, whites are more likely to perceive police actions as legitimate if the actions were conducted by white officers.