Journal article
Fatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980-2019: a network meta-regression
The Lancet (British edition), Vol.398(10307), pp.1239-1255
10/02/2021
DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01609-3
PMCID: PMC8485022
PMID: 34600625
Abstract
Background The burden of fatal police violence is an urgent public health crisis in the USA. Mounting evidence shows that deaths at the hands of the police disproportionately impact people of certain races and ethnicities, pointing to systemic racism in policing. Recent high-profile killings by police in the USA have prompted calls for more extensive and public data reporting on police violence. This study examines the presence and extent of under-reporting of police violence in US Government-run vital registration data, offers a method for correcting under-reporting in these datasets, and presents revised estimates of deaths due to police violence in the USA.
Methods We compared data from the USA National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) to three non-governmental, opensource databases on police violence: Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence, and The Counted. We extracted and standardised the age, sex, US state of death registration, year of death, and race and ethnicity (non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic of other races, and Hispanic of any race) of each decedent for all data sources and used a network meta-regression to quantify the rate of under-reporting within the NVSS. Using these rates to inform correction factors, we provide adjusted estimates of deaths due to police violence for all states, ages, sexes, and racial and ethnic groups from 1980 to 2019 across the USA.
Findings Across all races and states in the USA, we estimate 30 800 deaths (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 30 300-31 300) from police violence between 1980 and 2018; this represents 17 100 more deaths (16 600-17 600) than reported by the NVSS. Over this time period, the age-standardised mortality rate due to police violence was highest in non-Hispanic Black people (0.69 [95% UI 0.67-0.71] per 100 000), followed by Hispanic people of any race (0.35 [0.34-0.36]), nonHispanic White people (0.20 [0.19-0.20]), and non-Hispanic people of other races (0.15 [0.14- 0.16]). This variation is further affected by the decedent's sex and shows large discrepancies between states. Between 1980 and 2018, the NVSS did not report 55.5% (54.8-56.2) of all deaths attributable to police violence. When aggregating all races, the age-standardised mortality rate due to police violence was 0.25 (0.24-0.26) per 100 000 in the 1980s and 0.34 (0.34-0.35) per 100 000 in the 2010s, an increase of 38.4% (32.4-45.1) over the period of study.
Interpretation We found that more than half of all deaths due to police violence that we estimated in the USA from 1980 to 2018 were unreported in the NVSS. Compounding this, we found substantial differences in the agestandardised mortality rate due to police violence over time and by racial and ethnic groups within the USA. Proven public health intervention strategies are needed to address these systematic biases. State-level estimates allow for appropriate targeting of these strategies to address police violence and improve its reporting. Copyright (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Fatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980-2019: a network meta-regression
- Creators
- Fablina Sharara - University of WashingtonEve E. Wool - University of WashingtonGregory J. Bertolacci - University of WashingtonNicole Davis Weaver - University of WashingtonShelly Balassyano - University of WashingtonAlexandrea Watson - University of WashingtonIlse N. Dippenaar - University of WashingtonMatthew Cunningham - University of WashingtonJohn E. Fuller - University of WashingtonLaurie B. Marczak - University of WashingtonCatherine Owens Johnson - University of WashingtonGregory A. Roth - University of WashingtonAidin Abedi - Univ Southern Calif, Dept Orthopaed Surg, Los Angeles, CA 90007 USAJuan Manuel Acuna - Khalifa University of Science and TechnologyShailesh M. Advani - Terasaki Inst Biomed Innovat, Los Angeles, CA USAPradyumna Agasthi - Mayo Clin, Dept Cardiovasc Med, Scottsdale, AZ USAFares Alahdab - Mayo Clin Fdn Med Educ & Res, Mayo Evidence Based Practice Ctr, Rochester, MN USAZiyad Al-Aly - Washington Univ, John T Milliken Dept Internal Med, St Louis, MO 63110 USACatherine M. Antony - University of WashingtonShervin Assari - Drew UniversityAsma Tahir Awan - Capella UniversitySanjay Basu - Harvard UniversityArielle Wilder Bell - Harvard UniversityDejana Braithwaite - Univ Florida, Dept Epidemiol, Gainesville, FL USAKatrin Burkart - University of WashingtonAdrienne Chew - University of WashingtonDaniel Youngwhan Cho - University of WashingtonMohiuddin Ahsanul Kabir Chowdhury - Int Ctr Diarrhoeal Dis Res, Maternal & Child Hlth Div, Dhaka, BangladeshXiaochen Dai - University of WashingtonFarah Daoud - University of WashingtonSamath Dhamminda Dharmaratne - University of WashingtonLaura Dwyer-Lindgren - University of WashingtonIslam Y. Elgendy - Harvard UniversityJawad Fares - Northwestern UniversityMedhat Farwati - Cleveland Clin, Dept Internal Med, Cleveland, OH 44106 USAJames L. Fisher - The Ohio State UniversityAli Gholamrezanezhad - Univ Southern Calif, Dept Radiol, Los Angeles, CA 90007 USASameer Vali Gopalani - University of OklahomaAyman Grada - Boston UniversityAvirup Guha - The Ohio State UniversityNima Hafezi-Nejad - Johns Hopkins UniversityMohammad Rifat Haider - National and Kapodistrian University of AthensSimon I. Hay - University of WashingtonMd Mahbub Hossain - Nat Study Soc Bangladesh, Social & Environm Hlth Res, Khulna, BangladeshKevin S. Ikuta - University of WashingtonJessica Y. Islam - H Lee Moffitt Canc Ctr & Res Inst, Tampa, FL USARoxana Jabbarinejad - Northwestern UniversityKhaled Khatab - Sheffield Hallam UniversityJagdish Khubchandani - New Mexico State UniversityDaniel Kim - Northeastern UniversityRuth W. Kimokoti - Simmons UniversityAdnan Kisa - Kristiania Univ Coll, Sch Hlth Sci, Oslo, NorwayVijay Krishnamoorthy - University of WashingtonKris J. Krohn - University of WashingtonWayne R. Lawrence - NIH, Canc Prevent Div, Rockville, MD USAKate E. LeGrand - University of WashingtonStephen S. Lim - University of WashingtonZiqiang Lin - NYU, Dept Psychiat, 550 1St Ave, New York, NY 10016 USAXuefeng Liu - Cleveland Clin, Lerner Res Inst, Cleveland, OH 44106 USAMorteza Mahmoudi - Michigan State UniversityRamon Martinez-Piedra - Pan Amer Hlth Org, Noncommunicable Dis & Mental Hlth Dept, Washington, DC USAKala M. Mehta - Univ Calif San Francisco, Dept Epidemiol & Biostat, San Francisco, CA USATed R. Miller - Pacific Inst Res & Evaluat, Calverton, MD USAModhurima Moitra - University of WashingtonAli H. Mokdad - University of WashingtonShane Douglas Morrison - Univ Michigan, Sch Med, Sect Plast Surg, Ann Arbor, MI USAChristopher J. L. Murray - University of WashingtonAnna Maria Napoles - Natl Inst Minor Hlth & Hlth Dispar, Div Intramural Res, Bethesda, MD USAElaine Okanyene Nsoesie - Boston UniversityChristopher M. Odell - University of WashingtonShrikant Pawar - University of New HavenEliseo J. Perez-Stable - Natl Inst Minor Hlth & Hlth Dispar, NIH, Bethesda, MD USATessa M. Pilz - University of WashingtonPradhum Ram - Emory UniversityRobert C. Reiner - University of WashingtonNicholas L. S. Roberts - Weill Cornell Med Coll, Dept Med, New York, NY USASana Salehi - Univ Southern Calif, Dept Radiol, Los Angeles, CA 90007 USAJuan Sanabria - Case Western Reserve UniversityDavid C. Schwebel - University of AlabamaAziz Sheikh - Harvard UniversityInga Dora Sigfusdottir - Reykjavík UniversityJasvinder A. Singh - University of AlabamaEmma Elizabeth Spurlock - University of WashingtonBryan L. Sykes - Univ Calif Irvine, Dept Criminol Law & Soc, Irvine, CA USAHooman Tadbiri - Johns Hopkins UniversityImad I. Tleyjeh - Mayo ClinicAlexander C. Tsai - Massachusetts Gen Hosp, Dept Psychiat, Boston, MA 02114 USATheo Vos - University of WashingtonChenkai Wu - Duke UniversitySrikanth Yandrapalli - New York Medical CollegeIsmaeel Yunusa - Harvard UniversityRamin Zand - Geisinger Hlth Syst, Dept Neurosci, Danville, PA USAWangjian Zhang - SUNY Albany, Dept Environm Hlth Sci, Rensselaer, NY USAMohsen Naghavi - University of WashingtonGBD 2019 Police Violence US Subnational Collaborators
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- The Lancet (British edition), Vol.398(10307), pp.1239-1255
- DOI
- 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01609-3
- PMID
- 34600625
- PMCID
- PMC8485022
- NLM abbreviation
- Lancet
- ISSN
- 0140-6736
- eISSN
- 1474-547X
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Number of pages
- 17
- Grant note
- NIMHD Division of Intramural Research 5R01HL136868-03 / National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; United States Department of Health & Human Services; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA; NIH National Heart Lung & Blood Institute (NHLBI) Health Data Research UK National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD); United States Department of Health & Human Services; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA; NIH National Institute on Minority Health & Health Disparities (NIMHD) pooled funds U01MD014023 / National Institutes of Health; United States Department of Health & Human Services; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA 75N94019C00016 / National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities; United States Department of Health & Human Services; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA; NIH National Institute on Minority Health & Health Disparities (NIMHD) OPP1152504 / Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Explorations Initiative; CGIAR R01 HL136868-01A1 / National Institutes of Health National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; United States Department of Health & Human Services; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA; NIH National Heart Lung & Blood Institute (NHLBI)
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/02/2021
- Academic Unit
- Research Administration
- Record Identifier
- 9984949477902771
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