An analysis of discrimination biases in homicides committed by the police in São Paulo

Abstract

Recent events have triggered a series of discussions about racial discrimination in police behavior. An intense debate has been held to discuss whether the racial disparities observed in police behavior are due to racial or statistical discrimination bias. This dissertation aims to shed some light on the subject in the Brazilian context, specifically in the city of São Paulo. Previous literature has focused on examining the problem for more developed countries, such asUSA and Canada. As far as we know, there is no other study analyzing the problem for less developed countries. By collecting microdata from the police reports at the incident level for the years 2013 to 2021, we propose an identification strategy aimed at isolating the effects of racial bias and statistical bias discrimination in the police behavior through a binary response model, based on the visibility condition of the victim that the police officer has when committing homicide. Control variables that explain important individual characteristics and socio demographic variables regarding the environment in which the homicide happened were inserted in the analysis, aiming to explain as much as possible the differences between individuals. The results revealed no evidence of racial discrimination in the police behavior in the metropolitan area of São Paulo, however we found evidence of statistical bias discrimination