Seminar: Bocar Ba, Duke University

Speaker

Bocar Ba from Duke University

Title

"Understanding Demand for Police Alternatives"

Abstract

While police brutality has sparked demands to scale back policing, public constituencies still have limited knowledge about policing alternatives. In survey experiments, we provide information about dontcallthepolice.com—a database of police alternatives—and police violence statistics and evaluate their impact on respondents’ stated likelihood of calling the police. We find information about police alternatives increases the likelihood of relying on police in violent scenarios but significantly reduces it in scenarios for which police alternatives exist. These findings hold across political affiliations, suggesting broad support for limiting police involvement to violent crises and investing in police alternatives for nonviolent situations.