Replication Data for: The Age of Police Reform

This paper considers public opinion of the police, with a focus on the demographic determinants of attitudes toward policing. I present results from an original Cooperative Congressional Election Study survey question on preferences for policing to show that older Americans are considerably more supportive of additional policing than their younger counterparts, both within and across racial groups. I show that these differences cannot be attributed to age-correlated differences in partisan identification, urban or rural residence, income, education level, parenting status, or home ownership status. I further show that race differences in police policy preference are also much smaller once differences in age distributions are adjusted for, because Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks are so much younger than whites on average. These results have important implications for the understanding of the intersecting roles of race and age in American public opinion, as well as helping to explain the growth of municipal police departments despite falling crime. They also suggest new paths forward for police reform, centered on mobilizing young Americans and reducing seniors' demand for police services