overarrest

present singular third person overarrests · participle present overarresting · participle past overarrested · past overarrested

1. transitiveTo arrest at a disproportionately high rate.

   The emphasis on prosecution and conviction as metrics of success leads police and prosecutors to overarrest, overprosecute, and overpunish low-level drug and other crimes in many cases.

   2017, Sharon Dolovich, Alexandra Natapoff, The New Criminal Justice Thinking, page 61

   3 more examples

   Sorry, I’m Italian, and let’s say I see that Sicilian policemen arrest less people in Sicily. This could be for two reasons, one is that everybody else overarrests, or the Sicilian policemen underarrest. And can you tell those two things apart?

   2020 June 12, Kate Waldock and Luigi Zingales, “Should we defund the police?”, in Capitalisn't, archived from the original on 20 Feb 2026

   Criminal justice reform has become a national topic of discussion given recent police killings of Black men, and Jones points out that he's been a longtime activist on this issue, with his experience in Palo Alto and as an NAACP youth organizer. Also, he notes, as a Black man, "People like me are overpoliced, overarrested, overprosecuted."

   2020 June 22, Trudy Ring, “Mondaire Jones Could Be the Nation's First Black Gay Congressman”, in The Advocate, archived from the original on 15 Aug 2021

   So if you live in a zip code that has been overpoliced historically, you are going to have overarresting. And we know that the overpolicing and the overarresting happens in Black and Latino communities. That's just a fact.

   2023 July 19, Brianna Scott, Ailsa Chang, Jeanette Woods, “How AI could perpetuate racism, sexism and other biases in society”, in NPR, archived from the original on 04 Apr 2024