The Black Lives Matter movement has sparked a national conversation around police reform, with proposals ranging from reallocating resources to outright abolition of local departments.

Economists could help inform these discussions. But critics say existing economic research falls short of understanding the true impacts of policing on communities.

In a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Yale sociologist Monica C. Bell offers proposals for how economists can deepen their understanding of policing and public safety.

She says a good first step is to separate those two concepts.

Bell recently spoke with Chris Fleisher about how focusing on crime limits our understanding of the way policing shapes communities, why more research is needed on community-based safety programs, and how qualitative approaches can inform research based on big data.