Crime and segregation

Metropolitan areas in the United States are characterized by both geographic concentration in robbery rates, and racial segregation in residential patterns. We argue that these two phenomena are closely connected. Robberies typically involve incomplete information about the likelihood of victim resistance and offender violence. Geographic concentration in robbery rates can lead to segregation (in excess of levels that would emerge under neighborhood sorting by income) because robbers prey disproportionately on whites, believing them to be more compliant, and whites protect themselves by moving disproportionately to safer neighborhoods. Hence, conditional on income, blacks live in more dangerous neighborhoods than whites.     

An evaluation of the 1977 Canadian firearm legislation: robbery involving a firearm

The effect of the 1977 Canadian firearm legislation on robberies involving firearms is evaluated between 1974 and 1992 using a pooled cross-section, time series model. The results show that the 1977 legislation did not reduce robbery involving firearms, nor did it have a significant effect on the total robbery or armed robbery rates. The legislation may even have acted perversely in that it may have increased robberies with firearms. In general, these results are consistent with previous published findings but contrast with unpublished governmental studies. The implication that this legislation may have acted perversely is new and requires further investigation.     

Arena-based events and crime: an analysis of hourly robbery data

This article makes use of hourly crime counts to model the relationship between events that take place at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ and robberies, an arena that has caused local controversy regarding the costs and benefits of hosting such an entertainment venue. Results from the econometric model suggest that the NHL’s New Jersey Devils ice hockey games, concerts, and Disney-themed events are all associated with increases in robbery, while various other event categories such as the NBA basketball games played by the Nets and boxing, and mixed martial arts (MMA) matches are not associated with an increase. These findings support two complementary ecological theories of crime that focus on how events provide additional opportunities for crime by increasing the associated benefits while simultaneously decreasing the cost for economically motivated offenders to take advantage of.     

The effects of gun control on crimes: a spatial interactive fixed effects approach

This paper examines the effect of right-to-carry laws on crimes. We relax the assumption that unobserved time effects have homogeneous impacts on states; therefore, states with right-to-carry laws may follow different time trends which might be stronger or weaker than those of other states including states with no right-to-carry laws. The heterogeneous time trends are modeled by a factor structure where time factors represent time-varying unobservables, and factor loadings account for their heterogeneous impacts across states. No assumption is imposed on the shape of the time trend. Crime statistics exhibit spatial dependence, and a state’s adoption of right-to-carry law may have external effects on its neighboring states. Using a dynamic spatial panel model with interactive effects, we find positive spatial spillovers in crime rates. Depending on a crime category, an average \(1\%\) reduction in crime rates in neighboring states can decrease crime rates by 0.069–0.287%, with property crimes exhibiting higher degrees of spatial dependence than violent crimes. We find that although the passage of right-to-carry laws has no significant effects on the overall violent or property crime rates, they lead to short-term increases in robbery and medium-term decreases in murder rates. The results are robust to the number of factors, a different sample ending point, and some alternative spatial weights matrices and model specifications.     

Police Violence and the Underreporting of Crime

This paper examines the relationship between police violence and the reporting of crime. Utilizing original data from a large‐scale household survey conducted in Costa Rica from October 2013 to April 2014 (n = 4,200), we find that the observation of police violence significantly reduces citizens’ willingness to report crime. The implications of this finding are explored using a game‐theoretic model of crime, crime reporting, and police misconduct. The model reveals that although the prospect of police violence against criminals may generate a degree of deterrence for criminal behavior, permissiveness toward police violence also raises expectations about the likelihood of police abuse against law‐abiding citizens. Consistent with our empirics, this reduces citizens’ propensity to report crime, thereby fostering a climate of impunity for criminal activity.     

Casinos and campus crime

This work examines the hypothesized positive relationship between casinos and local crime rates. Analysis of reported crime data for 173 residential colleges and universities in four Midwestern states suggests that robberies and motor vehicle thefts, but not burglaries, are significantly higher in number for campuses located within 10 miles of a casino.     

What causes violent crime?

This study uses panel data of intentional homicide and robbery rates for a sample of developed and developing countries for the period 1970-1994, based on information from the United Nations World Crime Surveys, to analyze the determinants of national crime rates both across countries and over time. A simple model of the incentives to commit crimes is proposed, which explicitly considers possible causes of the persistence of crime over time (criminal inertia). A panel-data based GMM methodology is used to estimate a dynamic model of national crime rates. This estimator controls for unobserved country-specific effects, the joint endogeneity of some of the explanatory variables, and the existence of some types of measurement errors afflicting the crime data. The results show that increases in income inequality raise crime rates, crime tends to be counter-cyclical, and criminal inertia is significant.     

Athletic contests and individual robberies: an analysis based on hourly crime data

Using hourly data on individual robberies, this article employs a novel approach to investigate the relationship between athletic contests and individual robberies in Memphis, Tennessee, a well-known entertainment destination, with its iconic Beale Street locale, in the US. Empirical results indicate that home basketball games hosted by the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies and those hosted by the University of Memphis Tigers are associated with increases in individual robberies, while away games are not associated with such an increase. This finding is consistent with the hot spot theory of crime, as large numbers of individuals travel to the games, thus providing additional opportunities for crime.     

COPS and crime

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 established the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program that provided grants to states and localities to pay up to 75% of the cost for new police hires for 3 years. To date, the COPS program has awarded almost $5 billion in hiring grants paying for 64,000 new police officers. We use annual data from 1990 through 2001 from 2074 cities with populations in excess of 10,000 to show that for each officer paid for by grant funds, the size of the force expands by 0.70 officers. The size of COPS grants are correlated with population and crime rates, but not the pre-COPS time trends in crime rates or the size of the police force. This allows us to use the size of COPS grants as an instrument for the size of the police force in regressions where crime is the outcome of interest. These models indicate that police added to the force by COPS generated statistically significant reductions in auto thefts, burglaries, robberies, and aggravated assaults.     

THE IMPACT OF INFLATION ON PROPERTY CRIME

Using U.S. data from 1950 to 2010, we analyze to what extent inflation raises the incidence of property crime. To match our theoretical predictions, we consider different types of property crime (larceny, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and robbery) and broad and narrow definitions of inflation separately. We control for the state of the business cycle and demographic changes over time explicitly. Unobserved or difficult‐to‐measure determinants of property crime are captured through a stochastic‐trend specification within a state‐space framework. We find a robust statistical link between inflation and each of the four property crime rates. Our findings are robust to alternative definitions of inflation and the inclusion or exclusion of different control variables. In terms of policy, our findings suggest that monetary policy that creates inflation has costly spillover effects. (JEL J10, J11)     

A general equilibrium investigation of handguns,cops and robbers

We study a general equilibrium environment in which the only activity of interest is armed robbery. Agents choose to be citizens or robbers, and to purchase handguns or not. By arming, citizens can protect themselves from robbery. The government chooses the intensity of police efforts to arrest would-be robbers and to arrest citizens who arm for self-defense. Properties of an equilibrium are characterized and comparative statics results are obtained. We then show why empirical work that examines variations in “shall issue” laws could lead to wrong conclusions. Our analysis produces counterexamples to the following propositions: raising the arrest rate of robbers reduces crime; increasing the arrest rate of armed citizens reduces the number of armed citizens (crime rate, gun death rate). We thank V. V. Chari, John Kareken, Ross Levine, Andy McLennan, Raj Singh, David Smith, and an anonymous referee for helpful comments.     

和谐社会语境中家庭暴力犯罪的刑事立法完善

我国现行刑法在家庭暴力的犯罪行为规定中存在着不足,应当在以后的刑法修改中增设家庭暴力罪,准确界定家庭暴力罪的概念,立足于克服现行刑法中家庭暴力犯罪诸罪行设计的不足,严密设计家庭暴力罪的构成要件和追诉机制,以利于从刑法目的出发预防和惩治家庭暴力罪.     

Should the police give priority to violence within criminal organizations? A personnel economics perspective

Even among themselves, criminals are not seen as trustworthy. Consequently, a criminal organization needs to incentivize its members, either by threats of violence or by rewarding good behavior. The cost of using violence depends on the resources police allocate to investigating intraorganizational violence. This means that the police may affect the choice of an incentive scheme by the criminal organization. The design of the optimal strategy for crime control has to take this into account. We develop a model of an infinitely repeated criminal labor market where (i) a criminal organization hires and incentivizes members, and (ii) peripheral crime (crime outside the criminal organization) is a stepping stone to a career in organized crime. We establish that there are two possible optimal strategies for the police. (i) There are situations in which the optimal strategy for the police is to use all of their resources to decrease the efficiency of criminals. (ii) In other situations, the optimal strategy for the police is to spend the minimum amount of resources to ensure that the criminal organization cannot punish disloyal criminals, and spend the rest of their resources to decrease the efficiency of criminals.     

CRIME,DETERRENCE AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN ENGLAND AND WALES: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS*

This paper uses aggregate data from 42 police-force areas over 12 years to test predictions of Becker's economic model of crime. The effects of measures for deterrence on the incidence of three types of acquisitive criminal activity (burglary, theft, robbery) in England and Wales are explored. Mixed support for the Becker model emerges. The growth in unemployment is seen to impact positively on two of the three types of criminal activity examined. Per capita household income is seen to have a negative effect on the recorded rates of burglary and theft, but there is some evidence that the income variable is a proxy for the effects of unemployment. Poor housing conditions and the relative youth of the population were also found to play a role in the determination of criminal activity.     

Technological change and China's regional disparities — A calibrated equilibrium analysis

We in this paper assess the impacts of technological change on China's regional disparities using a general equilibrium model of multiple regions and multiple sectors. We use the most recent available Chinese interregional data to calibrate the model parameters for 1987 and 2000. We then assess the impacts of neutral, biased, and aggregate technological changes on China's regional disparity by conducting counterfactual experiments. The results generally suggest that China's overall technological change between 1987 and 2000 has increased China's regional disparities. The results also suggest that neutral technological change reduces China's regional disparities while biased technological change increases disparities and the influences of the latter outweigh those of the former and the net effects of technological changes on regional disparities are increasing.     

Does crime deter South Africans from self-employment?

The very high crime rate in South African cities is often argued to be the main reason for the country's small share of business ownership and self-employment. This paper revisits this hypothesis. We estimate the effect of crime on business ownership and performance using a matched dataset of census, survey and police data. In contrast to previous studies, which take into account perceived rather than actual crime and often focus on specific geographic areas, we do not find robust evidence that high crime rates have a negative impact on business ownership. Even though our estimate of the effect of crime is statistically significant and negative, it is economically small. Further, we find no evidence for a negative effect of actual crime on sales, profits and investment of informal businesses. This may imply that the low share of business ownership and self-employment in South Africa must have other reasons. These results may also suggest that crime may not be in general a serious threat for small businesses in low and middle-income countries, however, this needs further empirical research.     

WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR THE DECLINE IN CRIME?*

In this article we analyze recent trends in aggregate property crime rates in the United States. We propose a dynamic equilibrium model that guides our quantitative investigation of the major determinants of observed patterns of crime. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: First, the model is capable of reproducing the drop in crime between 1980 and 1996. Second, the most important factors that account for the observed decline in property crime are the higher apprehension probability, the stronger economy, and the aging of the population. Third, the effect of unemployment on crime is negligible. Fourth, the increased inequality prevented an even larger decline in crime. Overall, our analysis can account for the behavior of the time series of property crime rates over the past quarter century.     

Self-Reporting and Ex Post Asymmetric Information

We consider a model of optimal law enforcement where sanctions are reduced for self-reporting individuals. Violators get private signals about their individual probabilities of apprehension after they committed a crime. Since violators will self-report if and only if the signal is above a specific threshold, the possibility of self-reporting has an option value that leads to a higher crime rate if the authority's effort remains unchanged. We demonstrate that self-reporting nevertheless increases social welfare even under the restriction that the crime rate must not be higher than without self-reporting. Received June 15, 2001; revised version received December 19, 2001     

Love,hate and murder: Commitment devices in violent relationships

Many violent relationships are characterized by a high degree of cyclicality: women who are the victims of domestic violence often leave and return multiple times. To explain this we develop a model of time inconsistent preferences in the context of domestic violence. This time inconsistency generates a demand for commitment. We present supporting evidence that women in violent relationships display time inconsistent preferences by examining their demand for commitment devices. We find that no-drop policies – which compel the prosecutor to continue with prosecution even if the victim expresses a desire to drop the charges – result in an increase in reporting. No-drop policies also result in a decrease in the number of men murdered by intimates suggesting that some women in violent relationships move away from an extreme type of commitment device when a less costly one is offered.     

Does longer incarceration deter or incapacitate crime? Evidence from Truth-in-Sentencing reform

This article evaluates how Truth-in-Sentencing (TIS) laws impact both violent and property crimes through mandating violent offenders to serve a substantial proportion of sentenced terms before being eligible to release to community supervision. Focusing on states with effective TIS laws, I utilize the difference-in-differences design to investigate the treatment effect of TIS on crime. I observe statistically significant decline in both violent and property crimes in TIS states. A series of placebo tests confirm the robustness of the estimates and inferences. The dynamic impact of TIS is heterogeneous among the seven categories of violent and property crimes in TIS states: murder and robbery rates decline almost immediately after TIS, while property crime takes longer time to exhibit significant decline.