Concerning, but do we need policy reform? An experimental analysis of public reactions to accurate statistics on deaths caused by police officers and medical professionals

Preventable deaths by medical professionals and law enforcement officers figure prominently in political discourse. While databases have emerged to track such deaths, little is known about the public’s concern over the prevalence of these deaths, the perceived adequacy of societal attention to these deaths, and which policies the public supports to attempt to reduce these deaths. This study presents findings from a pre-registered survey with an embedded information provision experiment, randomly assigning accurate statistics on police-caused and medical error deaths. Findings suggest that the public finds both death types concerning and a serious problem, and that there is not adequate attention from the media and politicians given to both death types. Those assigned medical death statistics, as well as combined medical death and police-caused death statistics, were significantly more likely to agree that medical error deaths pose a larger societal concern than police deaths. Implications for policy and research are discussed.