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Police Discretion and Racial Disparity in Organized Retail Theft Arrests: Evidence from Texas
Author(s) -
Braun Michael,
Rosenthal Jeremy,
Therrian Kyle
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of empirical legal studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.529
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1740-1461
pISSN - 1740-1453
DOI - 10.1111/jels.12201
Subject(s) - discretion , law enforcement , criminology , criminal justice , property crime , business , deterrence (psychology) , white collar crime , political science , enforcement , law , violent crime , psychology
When definitions of two distinct criminal offenses overlap, power to decide which definition to apply to an arrest devolves to local law enforcement agencies. This discretion can lead to unequal treatment and denial of due process, especially when disadvantaged populations are arrested for nonviolent property crimes. We present a Bayesian analysis of arrests under a vaguely worded statutory scheme for retail theft in Texas, in which a shoplifter who is guilty of property theft is also guilty of organized retail theft. Using arrest data from the Texas Department of Public Safety, we find wide variation across law enforcement agencies in initial charging categories, with black and Hispanic arrestees being charged for the more serious crime more often than white arrestees. The racial discrepancy is greater for agencies serving cities with higher per‐capita income. These results highlight consequences of ambiguous provisions of criminal codes and suggest a method for identifying agencies whose policies may have disparate impact across racial and ethnic groups.