The Impact of Racial Composition and Other County Characteristics on the Size of Sheriff’s Departments: A New Analysis of Police Force Growth

Abstract

Over the past three decades, there have been an abundance of studies that have tested the impact of various city characteristics on police force strength. A number of these studies included minority population size as a control, however only a few have placed a great deal of concentration on this area, and we have found only one other study that has tested it at the county level. The current study tested the impact of minority populations, crime, and other county characteristics on the total number of sworn sheriff’s deputies and deputies in the field for 122 large counties across the United States. Unlike research focusing on the city level, we found that the number of sheriff’s deputies (either total sworn or field deputies) in a county is not highly influenced by minority population size or other characteristics of the county that they police.