The Lynching Era and Contemporary Lethal Police Shootings in the South

Abstract

The rate of police-involved killings in the U.S. greatly exceeds that of other industrialized nations and is highly racially disproportionate. Yet, we know relatively little about the antecedents of police violence, and even less about what explains the distribution of police killings across space. We ask whether there is a connection between contemporary police killings in the U.S. and the country's unique history of racial subjugation and violence. We focus particularly on lynching era violence in the South between 1877 and 1950 during which vigilantes killed thousands of Blacks and hundreds of Whites. We propose three main pathways through which lynchings shape law enforcement practices today: legacies of racialized criminal threat, brutalization, and legal estrangement. Analyzing Mapping Police Violence data that provide a more complete picture of lethal police force than currently available government databases, we find that lynching, regardless of victim race, moderately associates with present-day lethal police shootings of Blacks. We find some evidence that lynching also associates with lethal shootings of Whites, although this finding depends of model specification. On balance, our results suggest that lynching's legacy for law enforcement may operate through enduring cultural supports for severe punishment.