AMERICAN POLITICS & PUBLIC POLICY WORKSHOP
Abstract: Fatal shootings of civilians by police officers are common in the United States, raising questions about the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. All shootings of civilians by police officers, moreover, present opportunities for law enforcement agencies to learn how to strengthen community relations and alter criminal justice institutions to better public welfare, especially in communities of color. We study the effect of lethal force by police officers on citizen contact with government. To do so, we employ original data on the use of lethal force by police and a difference-in-differences design to estimate the effect of the use of lethal force at a neighborhood level within cities.
Tom Clark is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Political Science at Emory University. His research interests are in judicial politics, rational choice institutionalism, constitutional theory and design, democratic political institutions, and applied formal theory and statistical methods. Current research focuses on the theoretical and empirical analysis of legal rules and doctrine, the informational properties of litigation, and the politics of policing.