Law enforcement has historically been a male profession, and it
remains so today. Nevertheless, the share of female officers in local
police forces has increased dramatically since the late 1970s. This
paper examines the relationship between female representation on local
police forces and law enforcement quality, by focusing on the rate at
which crimes are reported to police, especially crimes against female
victims. This measures a key input into the production of law
enforcement and also reflects the degree of trust felt by crime
victims toward police. Violent crimes against women are thought to be
severely under-reported and advocates argue that hiring more female
officers, and assigning them to handle these cases, can be an
essential strategy for increasing reporting rates and deterring future
crimes.

Using panel data on local US crime reporting spanning over a decade
and a fixed effects regression framework with controls for economic
and policy variables, we find that violent crimes against females are
significantly more likely to be reported to police when the local
police has a greater share of female officers. We find no effect for
crimes against males. The increase in female reporting (both absolute
and relative to males) is strongest for domestic violence, in which
the victim was or had been romantically involved with the attacker.
This supports the hypothesis that female officers may be especially
effective at increasing the willingness of female victims to report
personal crimes that can be especially sensitive to discuss, and in
which a fear of retaliation from the attacker is heightened. In
contrast to these strong relationships for female representation among
police officers, we find no effect from changes in the share of female
civilian employees at police departments on crime reporting.