Episode No. 74- Study- Defunding the Police Increases Murders Especially Among Minorities With Guest Dr. Ben Hansen

Dr. Benjamin Hansen is the W.E. Minor Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon.  He is also the head of the Economics Department.  He Graduated from Birmingham Young University in 2004 with a B.A. in Economics.  He received his M.A. in Economics in 2005 and his PhD in Economics in 2009 from UC Santa Barbara.Dr. Hansen co-authored an article that is the subject of this episode of The Bail Post.  The citation for the article is:  Chalfin, Hansen, Weisburst and Williams, "Police Force Size and Civilian Race,"  American Economic Review:  Insights 4 (2); 139-58 (2022).The article addressed defunding the police and its impact on crime.  One of the conclusions of the study was that decreasing the size of the police force will increase murder rates and that will disproportionately negatively impact certain minority groups.  This means that decreasing the size of police will result in more murders and the number will increase even more for certain minority groups.While Dr. Hansen agrees that this is one of the conclusions of the report, he also highlights other strategies that were not addressed in the report as possible alternatives to attempt to decrease crime by moving police funds to other strategies.  Dr. Hansen admits there would be a time lag for some of these strategies and others might not be an actual replacement for police, but could augment them in certain areas to allow quicker response times.Join us for this episode of The Bail Post.