overarrest
overarrest verb: to arrest at a disproportionately high rate.
Verb
overarrest (third-person singular simple present overarrests, present participle overarresting, simple past and past participle overarrested)
- To 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
- 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
Examples of overarrest in a sentence
- 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...
- So if you live in a zip code that has been overpoliced historically, you are going to have overarresting.2023 July 19, Brianna Scott, Ailsa Chang, Jeanette Woods, “How AI could perpetuate racism, sexism and other biases in society”, in NPR...
Antonyms of overarrest
Forms of overarrest
| third-person singular present | overarrests |
|---|---|
| present participle | overarresting |
| past participle | overarrested |
| past | overarrested |
Origin of overarrest
From over- + arrest.
Questions about overarrest
- What does overarrest mean?
- Overarrest means to arrest at a disproportionately high rate.
- How do you use overarrest in a sentence?
- Also, he notes, as a Black man, "People like me are overpoliced, overarrested, overprosecuted."
- What part of speech is overarrest?
- Overarrest is a verb.
- What is the past tense of overarrest?
- The past tense of overarrest is overarrested.
Words near overarrest in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: overarrest (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “overarrest.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overarrest. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.