Do Police Maximize Arrests or Minimize Crime? Evidence from Racial Profiling in US Cities

It is difficult to identify sources of discrimination in police stop and search data. In part, this is due to uncertainty over the objective of discretionary police stops: Do officers aim to maximize arrests or to minimize crime? In this paper, I compare theoretical predictions implied by these two objectives to data from U.S. cities. Empirical evidence is consistent with a model of arrest maximization and inconsistent with a model of crime minimization. The findings support the validity of existing tests for discrimination that rely on the assumption that police officers maximize arrests.