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IZA Discussion Paper No. 18528
April 2026
Learning About Police Bias: Prosecutors and Police Before and After Body-Worn Cameras
Emma Harrington, Hannah Shaffer

Decision-makers often rely on earlier actors but fail to correct for their biases. We model and measure two mechanisms: underestimating upstream bias and treating subjective information as ground truth. We link an original survey of 203 North Carolina prosecutors to their 505,787 cases. Exploiting the rollout of police body-worn cameras (BWC), we show monitoring reduces incarceration disparities by 14 percent, little of which is driven by arrests. About one quarter of this effect reflects learning: prosecutors with greater BWC exposure view police as more biased and unreliable. Monitoring reduces disparities most for prosecutors who treat police reports as ground truth.

Kommunikation
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer-ext@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
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Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

Das IZA@LISER-Netzwerk ist eine weltweite Gemeinschaft für exzellente Forschung in der Arbeitsmarktökonomie und angrenzenden Fachgebieten. Nach dem Wechsel von Bonn wird das Netzwerk nun am Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) koordiniert.

Über das IZA@LISER Network
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