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The Politics of Police Reform in the States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2025

Michael W. Sances Open the ORCID record for Michael W. Sances [Opens in a new window]
Michael W. Sances*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Temple University, Political Science, Philadelphia, PA, USA
*
Email: msances@temple.edu
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Abstract

The 2020 Black Lives Matter protests dramatically increased the salience of police reform, yet the US Congress failed to pass any reforms. In contrast, state governments have passed hundreds of police-related bills since 2020. I summarize the plethora of state reforms passed over this period by grouping them into 18 key areas, including 14 I classify as pro-reform and four I classify as anti-reform. Next, I describe how party control and public opinion relate to state reforms. I find that state party control is a robust predictor of enacting pro-police reform policies, and that reforms are more likely in states with more Democratic and more pro-reform publics. While police reforms are responsive to public opinion, they are also typically incongruent.

Keywords

Federalismcrime policyparties in legislaturesrepresentationpublic opinion

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Type
Original Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , June 2025 , pp. 150 - 168
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the State Politics and Policy Section of the American Political Science Association

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