Racial/ethnic disparities in police recovery of stolen property: A previously unexplored facet of police/victim interaction

Abstract

Utilizing Donald Black's theory of law, the present study hypothesizes that police recovery of stolen property is affected by the relative social status of the victim/offender (victim and offender). It employs binary logistic regression on 1,607,823 incidents taken from the 2016 National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to assess whether race/ethnicity of the victim(s)/offender(s) influence this outcome while controlling for victim, jurisdiction, and incident characteristics. Analyses of victim race suggested that Black, Asian, and Native American victims were all less likely to have their property recovered than White ones. When both victims and offenders were considered, incidents involving Asian victims/offenders (victims and offenders are Asian) or Black victims/offenders (victims and offenders are Black) were especially unlikely to end in property recovery. Meanwhile, incidents where the offender(s) was a different race/ethnicity than the victim(s) were generally more likely to result in property recovery than when victim(s)/offenders were the same group. Consequently, this study supports certain predictions regarding police responsiveness and stratification from Black's theory of law. Yet while some racial/ethnic groups appear disadvantaged, whether someone is victimized by a non-community member may also be relevant.