The Effects of Criminal Experience on the Incidence of Crime

A bstract . A hypothesis has been analyzed that criminals learn by doing, that with experience criminals increase their activity so that with level outlays on police the incidence of crime may be increasing. This hypothesis is tested by statistical analysis of time series cross sectional data on crime levels, police outlays and various socioeconomic variables. The results confirm that "learning by doing"—accumulating criminal experience—increases criminal activity, that police outlays have a negative and significant effect on crime and that certain socioeconomic characteristics have a significant effect on crime.     

The Difference Between Short and Long Run Effects of Police Outlays on Crime: Policing Deters Criminals Initially, But Later They May 'Learn by Doing'

Abstract . In the long run a positive relationship of police expenditurescrime is derived in models which explain criminal behavior In the short run, however, the statistical results point to the possible deterring effect of police expenditures. A theoretical model is constructed to explain the statistical difference of the short and long run effect of police outlays on crime. As police expenditures increase, crime level diminishes. As time elapses, criminals may adjust to the new level of police effort, improve their performance and at the same level of outlays, increase their criminal activities. This phenomenon could be termed “Criminals’Learning by Doing”. It could explain why, over the long run, the level of crime is positively associated with police expenditures. The empirical analysis examines pooled cross sectional time series of 47 states over the period 1970 to 1980—a total of 517 cases.     

Econom(etr)ics of crime and litigation

Economists approach the behaviour of potential criminals, litigants and law enforcement agencies in terms of rational choice: the actors choose the best alternatives in terms of costs and benefits within the choices open to them. The prime focus of economists is on the general factors in society affecting the crime and litigation level and on the interaction between the crime and litigation level and the legal system. In doing so they have to study the interaction between the micro level of individual decision making and the macro level of the law enforcement system reacting on these decisions. Data are often only available at aggregate (macro) level. Econometric studies at the macro level, especially time series, have the problem that many effects have to be estimated from a limited number of data. Various types of studies and some empirical results regarding crime, litigation and the workload of judicial services are discussed.     

Criminal incident prediction using a point-pattern-based density model

Law enforcement agencies need crime forecasts to support their tactical operations; namely, predicted crime locations for next week based on data from the previous week. Current practice simply assumes that spatial clusters of crimes or “hot spots” observed in the previous week will persist to the next week. This paper introduces a multivariate prediction model for hot spots that relates the features in an area to the predicted occurrence of crimes through the preference structure of criminals. We use a point-pattern-based transition density model for space–time event prediction that relies on criminal preference discovery as observed in the features chosen for past crimes. The resultant model outperforms the current practices, as demonstrated statistically by an application to breaking and entering incidents in Richmond, VA.     

Competition in law enforcement and capital allocation

This paper studies inter-jurisdictional competition in the fight against crime and its impact on occupational choice and the allocation of capital. In a world where capital is mobile, jurisdictions are inhabited by individuals who choose to become either workers or criminals. Because the return of the two occupations depends on capital, and because investment in capital in a jurisdiction depends on its crime rate, there is a bi-directional relationship between capital investment and crime which may lead to capital concentration. By investing in costly law enforcement, a jurisdiction makes the choice of becoming a criminal less attractive, which in turn reduces the number of criminals and makes its territory more secure. This increased security increases the attractiveness of the jurisdiction for investors and this can eventually translate into more capital being invested. We characterize the Nash equilibria—some entailing a symmetric outcome, others an asymmetric one—and study their efficiency.     

A Markov Decision Process approach for balancing intelligence and interdiction operations in city-level drug trafficking enforcement

We study a resource allocation problem in which law enforcement aims to balance intelligence and interdiction decisions to fight against illegal city-level drug trafficking. We propose a Markov Decision Process framework, apply a column generation technique, and develop a heuristic to solve this problem. Our approaches provide insights into how law enforcement should prioritize its actions when there are multiple criminals of different types known to them. We prove that when only one action can be implemented, law enforcement will take action (either target or arrest) on the highest known criminal type to them. Our results demonstrate that: (i) it may be valuable to diversify the action taken on the same criminal type when more than one action can be implemented; (ii) the marginal improvement in terms of the value of the criminals interdicted per unit time by increasing available resources decreases as resource level increases; and (iii) there are losses that arise from not holistically planning the actions of all available resources across distinct operations against drug trafficking networks.     

Future‐Oriented Gang Members?

A bstract    Two prominent theories of crime ( Wilson and Herrnstein 1985 ; Gottfredson and Hirshi 1990 ) rely heavily on the notion that criminals are impatient or "present-oriented." In brief, the theories posit that present-oriented individuals will be predisposed to crime because the "costs" of crime (e.g., prison time) lag behind crime's benefits. While the theory has intuitive appeal, it remains controversial. This study considers a data set first presented by Levitt and Venkatesh (2000 ) that details a drug-selling gang's activities. In this gang, low-ranking criminals accept low initial wages in the hope of receiving high future remunerations. As demonstrated in the note, this wage structure is exceedingly difficult to reconcile (both theoretically and empirically) with the notion of present-oriented criminals. In sum, the study suggests that present orientation is at best an incomplete and idiosyncratic explanation of the causes of crime.     

Lethal Police Response as a Crime Deterrent:

A bstract . Since Gary Becker's article on the economics of crime and punishment , economists have explored extensively the possible deterrence effect of standard enforcement variables , not only for their public policy implications but to test the hypothesis that illegitimate behavior is sensitive to measures of risk and reward (loss) as well as social, psychological and cultural forces. Research has been needed on the probability of death to the offender caused by official police action—"lethal response." To measure the criminal reaction to intercity variations in the rate of civilian killings of police in the line of duty, a cross-sectional study of 57 cities was undertaken. Variations in non-homicide violent crime rate were found to be inversely related to variations in the intercity lethal response rate. this suggests the presence of a deterrence effect, a one Sixth of one percent decrease in the rate of non-homicide violent crime being associated with a one percent increase in the lethal response rate.     

Stolen Gun Control

Guns stolen from law-abiding households provide an important source of guns for criminals. Crime rates increase with the availability of stolen guns, so the gun market is subject to externalities that generate excessive ownership and inadequate spending on protective measures to deter gun theft. We show that a simple refundable deposit for guns can internalize the externalities in the gun market and decrease gun theft and crime rates. We also show that the self-defense motive for gun ownership can lead to multiple equilibria.     

The Economics of the Criminal Behavior of Young Adults

A bstract This study uses a combination of individual-level and county-level data to estimate an economic model of crime for young adults similar to that used by Becker (1968) and Trumbull (1989). In order to estimate a model of crime in which both individual-level and county-level data are used, it is necessary to take account of the bias introduced by using aggregate-level data in conjunction with individual-level data. In order to eliminate this bias, a technique derived by Moulton (1990) is employed. Results from a logit regression model indicate that race, sex. and peer pressure have statistically significant effects on the probability that a young adult will commit a crime. Results also suggest that police presence, as measured by county-level per capita police expenditures, does not deter young adults from committing crimes.     

The deterrence hypothesis revisited

This study explores the causes of crime and the differences in deterrent effects of policing on crimes among rural, suburban, and urban communities. We hypothesize that certain numbers of all crimes are unaffected by policing due to their high net return; policing deters only marginal crimes. That is, unlike other research efforts, we recognize that there is a level of crime indigenous to a given type of community about which little can be done, although a particular community can affect deviations from this level. By introducing this ‘natural rate' of crime we are able to empirically reveal the deterrence effect of police expenditures upon all types of property crimes except robberies. The study analyzes 230 communities in a system of six simultaneous equations, using police, crime, and other socio-economic variables. The model can be used by state and regional policy-makers to more effectively allocate resources to the different types of communities under their jurisdiction and among the various police functions designed to deter specific types of crime.     

Larceny

A dynamic general equilibrium model of larceny - or property crime - is presented in which both economic conditions and government policies affect the commission calculus. The model provides a behavioral framework that is used to estimate the effects of government policies on the commission of larceny. Calibrating the model using data from cities in Los Angeles County, the impact of a number of government policies and of economic development on larceny are quantified. The simulations show that longer prison sentences and higher conviction rates for criminals are the most effective methods to reduce larceny; subsidizing leisure activities, increasing police expenditures and income transfers have little effect on larceny. Using a game-theoretic optimality criterion, all the policies examined are currently overfunded.     

Crime Rates,Clearance Rates and Enforcement Effort: The Case of Houston,Texas*

Abstract . Two time series relationships with respect to police and criminal activities are analyzed. These relationships are: 1. That between police input and police output where the latter was measured by arrest and convictions rates and the former by expenditures and number of officers and, 2. The hypothetical one between the probability of arrest (the clearance ratio; i.e., the proportion of reported crimes for which arrests were made) and crime rates. Theoretically, an increase in expenditures for police effort would cause an increase in the clearance rate and a concomitant reduction in the crime rate. The results of this study showed little or no response in clearance and crime rates to small changes in police expenditures. However, there was evidence that large changes in police effort did produce some response in both clearance and crime rates. The implication of these findings was that the marginal product of police input was small.     

Economies of scale and market power in policing

The objective of this paper is to use a simultaneous equations method for estimating police production and demand to determine whether or not there are economies of scale in policing. In addition, the effect of market power on productivity, using the Herfindahl–Hirschmann Index, is to be measured. The estimation yields the result that there are diseconomies of scale with respect to the amount of crime beyond about 22 000 people in the policing jurisdiction and diseconomies of scale in numbers of police beyond about 36 000 people. Efficiency is also reduced where there is greater market power. This is conjectured to be the public sector equivalent of taking market power profits. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When haste makes sense: Cracking down on street markets for illicit drugs

This paper presents an analytical approach to the tactical question: ‘What level of enforcement over time allows one to eliminate a street market for illicit drugs while expanding the least possible total effort?’ The analysis is done in the context of Caulkins' model [6] which predicts the rate of change of dealers as a function of enforcement level and several market parameters. Our analysis suggests that the simple strategy of using the maximum available enforcement intensity until the market has been eliminated minimizes the total enforcement effort required.     

The Social Provision of Punishment and Incarceration

Standard economic theory proposes that public goods (equally available to everyone) will be underprovided by private markets. Individuals can benefit without having to pay, so there is little incentive to invest or manage resources efficiently. The punishment of criminals is an example of this, since everyone in a society benefits from reduced crime whether they pay to apprehend criminals or not. On that basis, it is widely presumed that governments must provide criminal justice services, including prisons. But the evidence in favor of that view is ambiguous. Stateless societies throughout history have found ways to maintain public order without ever building a prison. Nations with adequate social safety nets and a high degree of equality are also likely to rely on alternatives to incarceration. Strong forms of public goods theory, when applied to punishments and prisons, are shown to be false, since crime control does exist without a centralized state. Furthermore, the available evidence suggests that centralized government provision and management can also suffer inefficiencies from overproduction. Only comparative institutional analysis can speak to the efficiency potentials of punishment, wherein the costs of underproduction are assessed against the likely consequences of overproduction.     

Allocation of Time and Hateful Behavior

A bstract This paper uses the rational-choice economic approach to analyze hateful behavior. The theoretical model predicts that hateful activity decreases with increases in (i) the market wage rate, (ii) the value of time, (iii) age, and (iv) law enforcement activity. The theory is tested on U.S. state hate crime data and the empirical results provide convincing support for the model. Three other factors (urbanization, low occupational status, and downward social mobility) thought to be causes of hateful activity are found not to be statistically significant determinants of hateful activity.     

Ethnic Fractionalization,Governance and Loan Defaults in Africa

We present a theoretical model of an imperfectly competitive loans market that is suitable for emerging economies in Africa. The model allows for variation in both the level of contract enforcement (the quality of governance) and the degree of market segmentation (the level of ethnic fractionalization). The model predicts a specific form of nonlinearity in the effects of these variables on loan default. Empirical analysis using African panel data for 110 individual banks in 28 countries over 2000–08 provides strong evidence for these predictions. Our results have important implications for the conditions under which policy reform will enhance financial development.     

Enforcement of Accounting Standards in Europe: Capital-Market-Based Evidence for the Two-Tier Mechanism in Germany

On the background of regulatory initiatives that mandate the establishment of comparable enforcement systems in EU jurisdictions to ascertain consistent and faithful application of IFRS, this paper provides capital-market-based evidence on investor reactions for one specific institutional set-up: the two-tier enforcement system in Germany. In operation since 2005, the German enforcement mechanism consists of a private body, the DPR, which investigates compliance of published financial reports of firms listed on a regulated market segment and, upon error findings, involves the German securities regulator BaFin, which on a second level enforces disclosure of these findings to establish adverse disclosure (‘name and shame’). For a sample of error findings published in the period 2005–2009, we investigate short- and long-term market reactions to error announcements. Results for abnormal returns, abnormal trading volumes and abnormal bid‐ask spreads indicate that these announcements represent new, negative information and suggest that, despite an enforcement environment that is categorised as weak in the extant literature, the activities of the DPR/BaFin seem to penalise infringing firms and thus provide potential deterrence. Multivariate analyses yield weak evidence that the magnitude of the market value discount is positively associated with the severity of the errors, with the threat of subsequent litigation and with cases in which firms disagreed with the error findings of the DPR.     

Is There a Natural Rate of Crime?

Studies in the economics of crime literature have reached mixed conclusions on the deterrence hypothesis. One explanation that has been offered for the failure to find evidence of a deterrent effect in the long run is the natural rate of crime. This article applies univariate unit root tests to crime series for the United Kingdom and United States and panel unit roots to crime rates for a panel of G7 countries to examine whether there is a natural rate of crime. Our main finding is that when we allow for two structural breaks in the univariate unit root test and a structural break in the panel data unit root test, there is strong evidence of a natural rate of crime. The policy implications of our findings is that governments should focus on altering the economic and social structural profile that determines crime in the long run rather than increasing expenditure on law enforcement that will at best reduce crime rates in the short run.