Job Market Seminar

Abstract: Does police discipline deter misconduct among an officer's peers? How does the discretion of disciplinary decision-makers shape that deterrence? I study these questions in New York City, where a civilian oversight board recommends penalties and the police commissioner makes the final disciplinary decision. In 2021, the NYPD constrained the board's discretion by requiring it to base its recommendations on standardized penalties, while leaving the commissioner's final authority intact. I find that a disciplinary recommendation reduces misconduct among other officers in the same police unit by about 30\%, even before any penalty is imposed, and that final discipline produces an additional reduction of similar magnitude. The reform increased deterrence and reallocated it from the commissioner's final decision to the board's recommendation, allowing it to operate about a year earlier. More broadly, the findings show that the effects of disciplinary reform depend on how authority and discretion are distributed across decision-makers.