<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><div class="gmail-css-1vkm6nb ehdk2mb0" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><h1 id="gmail-link-5304c98a" class="gmail-css-3snf05 e1h9rw200" style="margin:0px auto 1rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:italic;font-variant:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:2.5rem;line-height:3rem;font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(18,18,18);width:600px;max-width:600px">Police Killings of Blacks: Here Is What the Data Say</h1></div><div class="gmail-css-79elbk" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><div class="gmail-css-z3e15g" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;opacity:0"></div><div class="gmail-css-d6u5yh ehw59r12" height="410.15179443359375px" width="600px" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;height:410.152px;width:600px"><div class="gmail-css-tux0zj ehw59r13" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;overflow:hidden"><div width="200px" height="482.99999999999994px" class="gmail-css-16fv9s5 ehw59r11" style="margin:0px;padding:15px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:flex;width:200px;height:483px;opacity:0"></div><div width="600px" height="410.15179443359375px" class="gmail-css-dmjb84 ehw59r14" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;height:410.152px"><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><div class="gmail-css-8h527k" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;background-color:rgb(247,247,245)"><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;height:auto"><img alt="" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/17/upshot/17UP-VIew/17UP-VIew-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; height: 410.152px; max-width: 100%; width: 600px; opacity: 1;"></div></div></div><button class="gmail-css-1vkv6l7 ehw59r10" style="margin:0px;font-size:20px;vertical-align:middle;padding:0px;border-width:initial;border-style:none;border-color:initial;height:60px;width:60px;opacity:0"></button></div></div></div><div class="gmail-css-1a48zt4 ehw59r15" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;opacity:1"><div class="gmail-css-bsn42l" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><img alt="Tomiko Shine holding up a picture of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy fatally shot last year by a  police officer in Cleveland, in a protest march." class="gmail-css-11cwn6f" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/10/17/upshot/17UP-VIew/17UP-VIew-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font: inherit; vertical-align: top; height: auto; max-width: 100%; width: 600px; cursor: pointer;"></div><span class="gmail-css-16f3y1r e13ogyst0" style="margin:0px 7px 0px 0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;vertical-align:baseline">Tomiko Shine holding up a picture of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy fatally shot last year by a  police officer in Cleveland, in a protest march.</span><span class="gmail-css-cnj6d5 e1z0qqy90" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:0.75rem;line-height:1.125rem;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline;color:rgb(136,136,136);letter-spacing:0.01em"><span class="gmail-css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0" style="padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;width:1px;height:1px;overflow:hidden">Credit...</span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press</span></span></span></div></div><div class="gmail-css-xt80pu e12qa4dv0" style="margin:0px auto 20px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:600px;color:rgb(18,18,18)"><div class="gmail-css-18e8msd" style="margin:0px 0px 1.5625rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><div class="gmail-css-vp77d3 epjyd6m0" style="margin:0px 0px 15px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:flex;width:600px"><div class="gmail-css-1baulvz" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline-block"><p class="gmail-css-1nuro5j e1jsehar1" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:700;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline-block;letter-spacing:0.02em;color:rgb(51,51,51)">By <span class="gmail-css-1baulvz gmail-last-byline" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline-block">Sendhil Mullainathan</span></p></div></div><ul class="gmail-css-1u1psjv epjyd6m3" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;list-style:none;display:flex"><li class="gmail-css-ccw2r3 epjyd6m1" style="margin:0px;padding:0px 1rem 0px 0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;list-style:none">Oct. 16, 2015</li><li class="gmail-css-1ut65qz epjyd6m2" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline;list-style:none"><div class="gmail-css-4xjgmj" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:flex"><div class="gmail-css-d8bdto" style="margin:0px 0px 5px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:17px;line-height:inherit;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(153,153,153);display:flex"><ul class="gmail-css-y8aj3r" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;list-style:none"><li class="gmail-css-qj0ud4 gmail-fb-share-item" style="margin:0px 16px 0px 0px;padding:10px 0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline;width:100%"></li><li class="gmail-css-qj0ud4 gmail-twitter-share-item" style="margin:0px 16px 0px 0px;padding:10px 0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline;width:100%"></li><li class="gmail-css-qj0ud4 email-share-item" style="margin:0px 16px 0px 0px;padding:10px 0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline;width:100%"></li><li class="gmail-css-qj0ud4 gmail-more-share-item" style="margin:0px 16px 0px 0px;padding:10px 0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline;width:100%"><div class="gmail-css-6n7j50" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline"><button class="gmail-css-16ogagc" type="button" style="margin:0px;font-size:17px;vertical-align:middle;padding:5px;border-width:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:rgb(238,238,238);background:rgb(238,238,238);border-radius:100%;width:27px;height:27px"></button></div></li><li class="gmail-css-qj0ud4" style="margin:0px 16px 0px 0px;padding:10px 0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline;width:100%"><button type="button" class="gmail-css-1h5igzw" style="margin:0px;font-size:17px;vertical-align:middle;padding:0px;border-width:initial;border-style:none;border-color:initial;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"></button></li><li class="gmail-css-y2jp8c" style="margin:0px;padding:10px 0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:inline;width:100%"><button type="button" class="gmail-css-1d50gvk" id="gmail-comments-speech-bubble-top" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 2px;font-size:0.75rem;vertical-align:middle;padding:0px 0px 4px;border-width:initial;border-style:none;border-color:initial;line-height:1rem;color:rgb(102,102,102);display:inline-flex;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;height:25px;min-width:24px;overflow:visible;text-transform:uppercase"><span class="gmail-css-1pv1u79" style="margin:0px;padding:4px;border:1px solid rgb(102,102,102);font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;background:transparent;border-radius:4px;display:flex;min-width:26px;min-height:14px;width:auto"><span class="gmail-css-1dtr3u3" style="margin:auto 0px 0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:0.75rem;line-height:0.75rem;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(0,0,0)">28</span></span></button></li></ul></div></div></li></ul></div></div><div class="gmail-css-1fanzo5 gmail-StoryBodyCompanionColumn" style="margin:0px auto 1rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:flex;height:1244.82px;width:945px"><div class="gmail-css-53u6y8" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px"><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Walter Scott. Michael Brown. Each killing raises a disturbing question: Would any of these people have been killed by police officers if they had been white?</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">I have no special insight into the psychology of police officers or into the complicated forensics involved in such cases. Answering this question in any single situation can be difficult and divisive. Two outside experts this month <a class="gmail-css-1g7m0tk" href="http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2015/10/10/us/10reuters-usa-police-ohio.html" title="Times coverage." style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(50,104,145)">concluded</a>, for example, that the shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland who was carrying a toy gun, was a “reasonable” if tragic response. That will hardly be the last word on the subject.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">As an economist who has studied racial discrimination, I’ve begun to look at these deaths from a different angle. There is <a class="gmail-css-1g7m0tk" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/upshot/the-measuring-sticks-of-racial-bias-.html?_r=0" title="Related Economic View column." style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(50,104,145)">ample statistical evidence</a> of large and persistent racial bias in other areas — from labor markets to online retail markets. So I expected that police prejudice would be a major factor in accounting for the killings of African-Americans. But when I looked at the numbers, that’s not exactly what I found.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">I’m not saying that the police in these specific cases are free of racial bias. I can’t answer that question. But what the data does suggest is that eliminating the biases of all police officers would do little to materially reduce the total number of African-American killings. Police bias may well be a significant problem, but in accounting for why some of these encounters turn into killings, it is swamped by other, bigger problems that plague our society, our economy and our criminal justice system.</p></div></div><div class="gmail-css-190ncxp" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;width:1097.14px;height:1rem"></div><div class="gmail-css-1fanzo5 gmail-StoryBodyCompanionColumn" style="margin:0px auto 1rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:flex;height:1486.43px;width:945px"><div class="gmail-css-53u6y8" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px"><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">To understand how this can be, let us start with the statistics on police killings. According to the F.B.I.’s Supplementary Homicide Report, 31.8 percent of people shot by the police were African-American, a proportion more than two and a half times the 13.2 percent of African-Americans in the general population. While this data may be imperfect, other sources in individual states or cities, such as in California or New York City, show very similar patterns.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">The data is unequivocal. Police killings <em class="gmail-css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">are </em>a race problem: African-Americans <em class="gmail-css-2fg4z9 e1gzwzxm0" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">are</em> being killed disproportionately and by a wide margin. And police bias may be responsible. But this data does not prove that biased police officers are more likely to shoot blacks in any given encounter.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">Instead, there is another possibility: It is simply that — for reasons that may well include police bias — African-Americans have a very large number of encounters with police officers. Every police encounter contains a risk: The officer might be poorly trained, might act with malice or simply make a mistake, and civilians might do something that is perceived as a threat. The omnipresence of guns exaggerates all these risks.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">Such risks exist for people of any race — after all, many people killed by police officers were not black. But having more encounters with police officers, even with officers entirely free of racial bias, can create a greater risk of a fatal shooting.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">Arrest data lets us measure this possibility. For the entire country, 28.9 percent of arrestees were African-American. This number is not very different from the 31.8 percent of police-shooting victims who were African-Americans. If police discrimination were a big factor in the actual killings, we would have expected a larger gap between the arrest rate and the police-killing rate.</p></div></div><div class="gmail-css-190ncxp" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;width:1097.14px;height:1rem"></div><div class="gmail-css-1fanzo5 gmail-StoryBodyCompanionColumn" style="margin:0px auto 1rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:flex;height:1951.25px;width:945px"><div class="gmail-css-53u6y8" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px"><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">This in turn suggests that removing police racial bias will have little effect on the killing rate. Suppose each arrest creates an equal risk of shooting for both African-Americans and whites. In that case, with the current arrest rate, 28.9 percent of all those killed by police officers would still be African-American. This is only slightly smaller than the 31.8 percent of killings we actually see, and it is much greater than the 13.2 percent level of African-Americans in the overall population.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">If the major problem is then that African-Americans have so many more encounters with police, we must ask why. Of course, with this as well, police prejudice may be playing a role. After all, police officers decide whom to stop or arrest.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">But this is too large a problem to pin on individual officers.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">First, the police are at least in part guided by suspect descriptions. And the descriptions provided by victims already show a large racial gap: Nearly 30 percent of reported offenders were black. So if the police simply stopped suspects at a rate matching these descriptions, African-Americans would be encountering police at a rate close to both the arrest and the killing rates.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">Second, the choice of where to police is mostly not up to individual officers. And police officers tend to be most active in poor neighborhoods, and African-Americans disproportionately live in poverty.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">In fact, the deeper you look, the more it appears that the race problem revealed by the statistics reflects a larger problem: the structure of our society, our laws and policies.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">The war on drugs illustrates this kind of racial bias. African-Americans are only slightly more likely to use drugs than whites. Yet, they are more than twice as likely to be arrested on drug-related charges. One reason is that drug sellers are being targeted more heavily than users. With fewer job options, low-income African-Americans have been disproportionately represented in the ranks of drug sellers. In addition, the drug laws penalize crack cocaine — a drug more likely to be used by African-Americans — far more harshly than powder cocaine.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">Laws and policies need not explicitly discriminate to effectively discriminate. As Anatole France wrote centuries ago, “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.”</p></div></div><div class="gmail-css-190ncxp" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;width:1097.14px;height:1rem"></div><div class="gmail-css-1fanzo5 gmail-StoryBodyCompanionColumn" style="margin:0px auto 1rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;display:flex;height:1115px;width:945px"><div class="gmail-css-53u6y8" style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px"><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">This is not just about drugs or law enforcement. Poverty plays an essential role in all of this. Jens Ludwig, an economist at the University of Chicago who also directs the Crime Lab there, points out: “Living in a high-poverty neighborhood increases risk of violent-crime involvement, and in the most poor neighborhoods of the country, fully four out of five residents are black or Hispanic.”</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">We will not sharply reduce police killings of African-Americans unless we understand the social institutions that intimately tie race and crime. In her book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” Michelle Alexander argues that the American criminal justice system itself is an instrument of racial oppression. “Mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race,” she says.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">Individual police officers did not set these economic policies that limited opportunities or create the harsh sentencing policies that turn minor crimes into lifetime sentences.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px 0px 0.9375rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">We should eliminate police prejudice because it is wrong and because it undermines our democracy. It blights — and all too often destroys — lives.</p><p class="gmail-css-158dogj evys1bk0" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.875rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;width:600px;max-width:100%">But there are also structural problems underpinning these killings. We are all responsible for those.</p></div></div><div class="gmail-bottom-of-article" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant-numeric:inherit;font-variant-east-asian:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:20px;line-height:inherit;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(51,51,51)"><div class="gmail-css-1ubp8k9" style="margin:1rem auto 1.25rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:italic;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:1.1875rem;line-height:1.75rem;font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,"times new roman",times,serif;vertical-align:baseline;max-width:600px"></div><div class="gmail-css-1yif149" style="margin:2rem auto 1rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.375rem;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;max-width:600px"><p style="margin:0px 0px 1rem;padding:0px;border:0px;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline">Sendhil Mullainathan is a professor of economics at Harvard. Follow him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/m_sendhil" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border-width:0px 0px 1px;border-top-style:initial;border-right-style:initial;border-bottom-style:solid;border-left-style:initial;border-top-color:initial;border-right-color:initial;border-bottom-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-color:initial;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;text-decoration-line:none;color:black">@m_sendhil.</a></p></div></div></div></div>