Does a helping hand put others at risk?: Affirmative action, police departments, and crime

Will increasing the number of minority and women police officers make law e nforcement more effective by drawing on abilities that have gone untapped a nd creating better contact with communities and victims? Or will standards have to be lowered too far before large numbers of minorities and women can be hired? Using cross-sectional time-series data for U.S. cities for 1987, 1990, and 1993, I find that hiring more black and minority police officers increases crime rates, but this apparently arises because lower hiring sta ndards involved in recruiting more minority officers reduces the quality of both new minority and new nonminority officers. The most adverse effects o f these hiring policies have occurred in the areas most heavily populated b y blacks There is no consistent evidence that crime rates rise when more wo men are hired and this raises questions about whether norming tests or alte ring their content to create equal pass rates is preferable. The article ex amines how the changing composition of police departments affects such meas ures as the murder of and assaults against police officers. (JEL J72, K14, H42).