The market for street crime: An economic analysis of victim-offender interaction

This paper views the economic explanation of crime rates from a new perspective by explicitly deriving an economic model of the behavior of potential victims and considering the interaction of the behavior of potential victims with the behavior of offenders. Crime is produced through offenders supplying time in search of victims and victims demanding to expose themselves to the environment. A model is set up in which the crime rate, the probability of being a victim per unit of exposure time, and the probability of finding a victim per unit of offenders' search time are simultaneously determined. The model leads us to distinguish the “real” crime rate (the probability of being a victim per unit of exposure time) from the “nominal” crime rate (the number of crimes per capita). The nominal crime rate can be inversely related to the real crime rate.     

Fear of crime and housing prices: Household reactions to sex offender registries

Megan's Law requires public dissemination of information from sex offender registries. Opponents to this controversial law have questioned whether households misinterpret or even use this information. One concern was that the information might simply induce a “fear of crime.” This study finds evidence for both use and misinterpretation of the publicly available information on sex offenders. Using a unique dataset that tracks sex offenders in Hillsborough County, Florida, the results indicate that after a sex offender moves into a neighborhood, nearby housing prices fall by 2.3% ($3500 on average). However, once a sex offender moves out of a neighborhood, housing prices appear to immediately rebound. Surprisingly, these price impacts do not appear to differ in areas near high risk offenders labeled as “predators.”     

Crime in urban areas: New evidence and results

Crime supply functions are reestimated in this paper using data corrected for victim underreporting. It is found in both a mean-variance specification and a conventional crime supply function, which includes measures of the offender's gains and losses involved in property crimes, that certainty and severity of punishment still deter. When correction for underreporting is made, the effects on the rates of robbery, burglary, larceny, and auto theft of increases in prison admission rates and prison sentence lengths remain negative. This seeming support for the “deterrence hypothesis” must be balanced against the strong evidence that improved legitimate opportunities have a negative effect on crime. Use of improved crime data and a more intuitive economic specification of the offense supply function leads to the conclusion that higher income is a better deterrent to some crimes than increased punishment.     

Assessing the impact of crime on the economic performance: the case of central america

Crime is obviously a menace to economic growth and progress, but to acutely understand the enormity of its impact on economic performance for effective policy action, requires a credible means of measurement. Given the crime notoriety of the most of Central America and the struggling state of their economies, this article attempts to discern from econometric evaluation and analyses, the calculable economic impact of crime on the region’s economic progress. From analyses of results, we find the model to be credible and useful following its provision of a much more accurate degree to which crime affects economic performance in Central America, which we find critical to guide policy measures.     

犯罪预防性环境设计与居住区安全性的提升——以瑞典罗森歌德居住区改造项目为例

随着城市的发展和社会的转型,欧美国家的部分居住区中出现了较严重的安全问题和社区衰败现象,通过规划设计改善社区的安全状况的犯罪预防性环境设计(CPTED)理论应运而生。以瑞典罗森歌德居住区改造项目为例,从社区形象、邻里监控、领域感和归属感等方面分析了环境改造对社区安全性提升所起的作用。     

Marked point process hotspot maps for homicide and gun crime prediction in Chicago

Crime hotspot maps are a widely used and successful method of displaying spatial crime patterns and allocating police resources. However, hotspot maps are often created over a single timescale using only one crime type. In the case of short-term hotspot maps that utilize several weeks of crime data, risk estimates suffer from a high variance, especially for low frequency crimes such as homicide. Long-term hotspot maps that utilize several years of data fail to take into account near-repeat effects and emerging hotspot trends. In this paper we show how point process models of crime can be extended to include leading indicator crime types, while capturing both short-term and long-term patterns of risk, through a marked point process approach. Several years of data and many different crime types are systematically combined to yield accurate hotspot maps that can be used for the purpose of predictive policing of gun-related crime. We apply the methodology to a large, open source data set which has been made available to the general public online by the Chicago Police Department.     

PROBLEM-SOLUTIONS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS EXPERTISE

This article uses evidence on the management of Information Systems (IS) expertise to critique conventional understandings of the management of expert groups. These tend to focus on problems of ‘integration’ or ‘control’ at the point of production. But this neglects the interplay between organizations and the wider structure of IS expertise; the latter being shaped by the evolving computer technology regime and the IS occupation's ability to colonize technological knowledge. In this context, the management of expertise is better viewed as an evolving series of ‘problem-solutions’. ‘Hybrid managers’ and ‘strategic information systems’ are cited as instances of such problem-solutions.     

Waste crime in Italian Regions: A Structural Equation Approach

The main aim of this paper is to analyze the determinants of waste crime in Italy by employing a Structural Equation Approach estimated by the Partial Least Square algorithm (PLS-SEM). By treating waste crime as a latent variable that is directly related to its causes and effects, the PLS-SEM methodology allows us to derive a Waste Crime Index (WCI) at the regional level over the period from 2004 to 2016. This analysis decomposes the overall effects of each cause of WCI from the direct and indirect components. Accordingly, we provide some hints to design more effective policies to prevent waste crime.     

Supplier relationship-specific investments and the role of safeguards for supplier innovation sharing

The vast majority of the supplier innovation literature has focused on how buying firms can effectively “pull” innovations from their suppliers. Yet, we know remarkably little about the factors that contribute to a supplier voluntarily “pushing” innovations to its customers. The present study addresses this research gap in the context of industrial buyer–supplier relationships and with a specific focus on relationship-specific investments. Drawing on theory from the relationship-marketing literature and on transaction cost theory, we devise and test a proposed theoretical model that links the level of a supplier's relationship-specific investments to its sharing of innovative ideas regarding products and processes with customers. The model also considers the role of contract length, relationship age, and buyer–supplier cooperation as possible safeguards. The empirical results suggest that a supplier's relationship-specific investments encourage a supplier to suggest ideas of process innovations but to refrain from suggestions about product innovations. The latter effect, however, can be attenuated by appropriate formal and informal safeguards.     

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.     

Accounting for crime

New law and order legislation has a patchy record so far as crime reduction is concerned. Can economic analyses help decide between competing policies? Taking the current Crime (Sentences) Bill as an example, the author argues that as a first step new legislative proposals should be subject to more intensive fiscal examination.     

浅谈计算机信息安全

现今社会网络发展日新月异,甚至我们的生活都无法离开网络,但事物都有它的两面性,网上信息不是被泄露,就是被篡改假冒,甚至借用计算机网络进行犯罪,计算机病毒更是肆意传播。信息安全是迫在眉睫要解决的问题,设置密码就是其中最有效而且便捷的方法,我们应该研究和掌握好这门技术。     

The Challenge of Adaptive Capability in Public Organizations

Abstract

This article describes an attempt within the Danish Crime Prevention Council to improve adaptive capability. The article applies a complex adaptive system perspective and analyses the organizational identities of the Council to determine how processes of integration, differentiation and fragmentation influence adaptive capability. The findings emphasize the importance of path dependency in actor's attempts to adapt. Based on this finding, the article suggests that the complex adaptive system perspective can be enriched by an institutional theory.     

Fear of crime and housing prices: Household reactions to sex offender registries

Megan's Law requires public dissemination of information from sex offender registries. Opponents to this controversial law have questioned whether households misinterpret or even use this information. One concern was that the information might simply induce a “fear of crime.” This study finds evidence for both use and misinterpretation of the publicly available information on sex offenders. Using a unique dataset that tracks sex offenders in Hillsborough County, Florida, the results indicate that after a sex offender moves into a neighborhood, nearby housing prices fall by 2.3% ($3500 on average). However, once a sex offender moves out of a neighborhood, housing prices appear to immediately rebound. Surprisingly, these price impacts do not appear to differ in areas near high risk offenders labeled as “predators.”     

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.     

Why is the hypothetico-deductive (H-D) method in information systems not an H-D method?

The hypothetico-deductive (H-D) method is reported to be common in information systems (IS). In IS, the H-D method is often presented as a Popperian, Hempelian, or natural science method. However, there are many fundamental differences between what Popper or Hempel actually say and what the alleged H-D method per Hempel or per Popper means in IS. To avoid possible misunderstanding and conceptual confusion about the basic philosophical concepts, we explain some of these differences, which are not mentioned in IS literature describing the H-D model. Due to these distinctive differences, the alleged H-D method per Hempel or per Popper in IS cannot be regarded as the H-D model per Hempel or per Popper. Further, the H-D model is sometimes confused with another model in IS, the deductive-nomological (D-N) model of explanations. Confusing the H-D and D-N methods can also produce stagnation in the fundamental methodological thinking in IS. As one example, the H-D model (per Hempel or per Popper) does not require hypotheses to be based on existing theories or literature. As a result, misunderstanding the H-D model in IS may seriously limit new hypothesis or theory development, as the H-D model in the philosophy of science allows guessing and imagination as the source for hypotheses and theories. We argue that although IS research (1) generally does not follow the H-D method (per Hempel or per Popper), and (2) should not follow the H-D method, (3) we can still learn from the H-D method and criticisms of it. To learn from the H-D method, we outline method of hypothesis (MoH) approaches for further discussion. These MoH approaches are not hypothetico-deductive, but hypothetico-inductive-qualitative or hypothetico-inductive-statistical. The former MoH endeavors to be suitable for qualitative research, while the latter is aimed for statistical research in IS.     

An evaluation of the Federal Legal Services Program: Evidence from crime rates and property values

This paper uses the city-level roll-out of legal service grants to evaluate their effects on crime. Using Uniform Crime Reports from 1960 to 1985, the results show that there is a short-run increase of 7% in crimes reported and a 16% increase in crimes cleared by arrest. Results show an increase in the staffing of police officers in cities that received legal services. These cities are also associated with having higher median property values 10 years later. This supports the narrative that legal services changed police behavior through litigation or threats of litigation.