The Limits of Police Reform

The data caution against expecting too much, and radical changes could have harmful consequences..

George Floyd’s senseless death under the knee of Officer Derek Chauvin has prompted conversations about how to reduce police use-of-force. Proposals run the gamut from abolishing qualified immunity and investing in de-escalation training, to reducing militarization and defunding the police altogether. It’s an important discussion, but one that requires tempered expectations—not because police are impervious to policy interventions, but because many popular reform proposals suffer from two practical limits.

The first is an inflated sense of...