Back on the street
The Impact of Police on Criminal Justice Reform: Evidence from Cincinnati, Ohio
Robin Engel, Nicholas Corsaro & Murat Ozer
Criminology & Public Policy, May 2017, Pages 375–402
Abstract:
Despite significant national reductions in crime during the past three decades, a comparable reduction in adult arrest rates has not occurred. In addition, scant attention has been paid to the role of the police in pretrial justice and other criminal justice reform efforts, despite their role as gatekeepers to the criminal justice system. A key inquiry that must be addressed by both academics and practitioners is whether it is possible to reduce crime and the number of arrests simultaneously. Cincinnati (Hamilton County), Ohio, provided a unique opportunity to examine this unanswered question when it closed the Queensgate Correctional Facility in 2008, thereby reducing the available jail space in the county by 36%. By relying on an interrupted time-series analysis, our findings show that contrary to public concern, both crime and arrests were reduced in Cincinnati even after the jail closure. Specifically, the Cincinnati Police Department reported a statistically significant decrease in felony arrests, and a nonsignificant decline in misdemeanor arrests, while maintaining a continued (nonsignificant) decline in violence and property crimes. Importantly, our findings demonstrate that the previous existent downward trend in Cincinnati reported crimes was not interrupted with the loss of more than one third of the available jail space in Hamilton County.
After the Stop: Exploring the Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Police Use of Force During Terry Stops
Weston Morrow, Michael White & Henry Fradella
Police Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Questions surrounding stop, question, and frisk (SQF) practices have focused almost exclusively on racial and ethnic disproportionality in the rate of stops, and whether police are engaged in racial profiling. This near-sole focus on the stop decision has overshadowed important questions about the use of force during Terry stops, resulting in a major gap in our understanding of the dynamics of SQF encounters. The current study addresses this issue through an examination of the nature, prevalence, and predictors of use of force during Terry stops using the 2012 SQF database of New York Police Department (NYPD; N = 519,948) and data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Results indicate that use of force was an infrequent event in NYPD stops (14%), and weapon force was quite rare (.01%). However, hierarchical multinomial logistic regression models show that Black and Hispanic citizens were significantly more likely to experience non-weapon force than White citizens, while controlling for other relevant situational and precinct-level variables. The findings suggest that minority citizens may be exposed to a racial or ethnic “double jeopardy,” whereby they are subjected to both unconstitutional stops and disparate rates of force during those stops. The study highlights the importance of expanding the focus on SQF beyond the racial profiling lens, as questions about the dynamics of police use of force decision-making raise equally important social and legal concerns.
Depolicing as Dissent Shirking: Examining the Effects of Pattern or Practice Misconduct Reform on Police Behavior
Joshua Chanin & Brittany Sheats
Criminal Justice Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Theory suggests that bureaucratic actors express opposition to unfavorable organizational and policy changes by acting in ways inconsistent with established rules, norms, and community expectations . Empirical evidence from various professional contexts and geographic locations lends support to the notion that some public employees have indeed engaged in dissent shirking by refusing to perform at their best so as to express work-related dissatisfaction. This research relies on a quasi-experimental design to examine this phenomenon in the context of the police. The study’s analysis will be driven by a series of autoregressive integrated moving average models in order to examine the extent to which a form of dissent shirking — “depolicing” — has occurred in jurisdictions investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice under that agency’s pattern or practice authority. Despite qualitative support for depolicing under these conditions, this analysis shows no evidence that officers responded to external criticism and intensified oversight brought on by the pattern or practice reform process by policing less proactively. Findings are discussed in terms of both theory and policy.
De-policing and crime in the wake of Ferguson: Racialized changes in the quantity and quality of policing among Missouri police departments
John Shjarback et al.
Journal of Criminal Justice, May 2017, Pages 42–52
Methods: Using data from 118 of the 121 police departments serving jurisdictions over 5000 residents in Missouri, we examined changes in both the quantity (rates of vehicle/traffic stops, searches, and arrests) and quality (“hit rates” from searches) of policing from 2014 to 2015 and whether de-policing corresponded with year-over-year changes in crime rates.
Results: The findings revealed a − 0.11 standardized change in stops (around 67,000 fewer stops in 2015 than 2014) and a 0.17 standardized change in hit rates (nearly 2 percentage points). Multivariate models indicated that departments serving larger African-American populations conducted fewer stops (β = − 0.44), searches (β = − 0.37), and arrests (β = − 0.27) in 2015 compared to 2014, although race was unrelated to changes in hit rates. Changes in police behavior had no appreciable effect on total, violent, or property crime rates.
Police Consent Decrees and Section 1983 Civil Rights Litigation
Zachary Powell, Michele Bisaccia Meitl & John Worrall
Criminology & Public Policy, May 2017, Pages 575–605
Abstract:
Section 14141 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 granted the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) the authority to investigate, intervene into, and force reforms within any police department deemed to exhibit a pattern or practice of police misconduct. The DOJ's primary enforcement mechanism is to sue the offending jurisdiction. Such lawsuits are typically settled with “consent decrees” or court-ordered legal agreements to implement specified reforms. We assembled a panel data set to explore the relationship between consent decrees and civil rights litigation in 23 targeted jurisdictions. The results suggest that DOJ intervention may be associated with modest reductions in the risk of civil rights filings.
Does Public Assistance Reduce Recidivism?
Crystal Yang
American Economic Review, May 2017, Pages 551-555
Abstract:
Under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, individuals convicted of drug-related felonies were permanently banned from receiving welfare and food stamps. Since then, over 30 states have opted out of the federal ban. In this paper, I estimate the impact of public assistance eligibility on recidivism by exploiting both the adoption of the federal ban and subsequent passage of state laws that lifted the ban. Using administrative prison records on five million offenders and a triple-differences research design, I find that public assistance eligibility for drug offenders reduces one-year recidivism rates by 10 percent.
The effects of state and Federal gun control laws on school shootings
Mark Gius
Applied Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
School shootings are the highest profile type of murder in the United States. They are also the rarest type of murder. In 2014, there were only 17 firearm murders that were perpetrated in schools and colleges. The purpose of the present study is to determine the relationship between school shootings and state and Federal gun control laws. Using a Poisson, two-way fixed effects model, it was found that assault weapons bans reduced the number of school shooting victims by 54.4%. All other gun control laws (concealed carry laws, private sale background checks and Federal dealer background checks) had no statistically significant effects on school shootings. Although assault weapons bans may reduce the overall number of school shooting victims, the average reduction in murder victims may be less than 10 per year. Hence, it is unclear if gun control is the most appropriate policy to use to reduce the number school shooting victims.
Institutional Placement and Illegal Earnings: Examining the Crime School Hypothesis
Holly Nguyen et al.
Journal of Quantitative Criminology, June 2017, Pages 207–235
Methods: We use panel data from a sample of 615 serious juvenile offenders who reported illegal earnings and information regarding institutional stays over a 7 year period. There are two separate measures that can contribute to criminal capital within institutions: the prevalence of friends in the institution who have committed income generating crimes and the length of institutional stays as a cumulative dosage. We account for unobserved heterogeneity using fixed effects estimation.
Results: Both institutional measures, total number of days incarcerated and exposure to deviant peers, predict a positive increase in an individual’s daily illegal wage rate, even after eliminating fixed unobserved heterogeneity and controlling for important time-varying confounders. For total number of days institutionalized, there were positive though marginally declining returns to length of stay.
Deterrence and the Optimal Use of Prison, Parole, and Probation
Mitchell Polinsky & Paul Riskind
NBER Working Paper, May 2017
Abstract:
We derive the sentence — choosing among the sanctions of prison, parole, and probation — that achieves a target level of deterrence at least cost. Potential offenders discount the future disutility of sanctions and the state discounts the future costs of sanctions. Prison has higher disutility and higher cost per unit time than parole and probation, but the cost of prison per unit of disutility can be lower or higher than the cost of parole and probation per unit of disutility. The optimal order of sanctions depends on the relative discount rates of offenders and the state, and the optimal duration of sanctions depends on the relative costs per unit of disutility among the sanctions and on the target level of deterrence. In the case we focus on, in which potential offenders discount the disutility of sanctions at a higher rate than the state discounts the costs of sanctions, we demonstrate that (a) it is optimal for prison to precede parole if both sanctions are used; and (b) it may be optimal to employ prison even if prison has a higher cost per unit of disutility than parole and probation and even if prison is not needed to achieve the deterrence target.
Traders, guns, and money: The effects of mass shootings on stock prices of firearm manufacturers in the U.S.
Anandasivam Gopal & Brad Greenwood
PLoS ONE, May 2017
Abstract:
We investigate how mass shootings influence the stock price of firearms manufacturers. While it is well known that mass shootings lead to increased firearms sales, the response from financial markets is unclear. On one hand, given the observed short-term increase in demand, firearm stock prices may rise due to the unexpected financial windfall for the firm. On the other, mass shootings may result in calls for regulation of the industry, leading to divestment of firearms stocks in spite of short-term demand. We examine this tension using a market movement event study in the wake of 93 mass shootings in the U.S. between 2009 and 2013. Findings show that stock prices of firearm manufacturers decline after shootings; each event reducing prices between 22.4 and 49.5 basis points, per day. These losses are exacerbated by the presence of a handgun and the number of victims killed, but not affected by the presence of children or location of the event. Finally, we find that these effects are most prevalent in the period 2009–2010 but disappear in later events, indicating that markets appear to have accepted mass shootings as the “new normal.”
Scared of the Shelter from the Storm: Fear of Crime and Hurricane Shelter Decision Making
Ashley Farmer et al.
Sociological Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Theories about fear of crime may offer insights about the use of public shelters in disaster situations. This study focuses on fear of victimization and gendered explanations of fear of crime in public shelters during hurricane events. From surveys of 424 North Carolina residents, 179 respondents described safety concerns with staying in a public shelter. Fear of victimization was the most commonly identified safety concern in connection to anticipated shelter use, significantly more so than concerns related to sanitation or structural integrity. Female respondents more often described fear of violent and sexual crimes in public shelters, which could be explained through the sexual assault hypothesis. We draw into our analysis literature examining the relationship between fear of crime and gender as we explore the implications of the results on planning for evacuation and sheltering in disaster events. By directly addressing perceived security in public shelters, we hope to expand our understanding of an important U.S. disaster setting by bridging research between fear of crime and disaster studies.
Overlapping Hot Spots? Examination of the Spatial Heterogeneity of Hot Spots of Different Crime Types
Cory Haberman
Criminology & Public Policy, May 2017, Pages 633–660
Abstract:
In this study, the extent to which hot spots of different crime types overlapped spatially in Philadelphia, PA, were examined. Multiple techniques were used to identify crime hot spots for 11 different crime types. Univariate and bivariate statistics also were used to quantify the extent to which hot spots across the 11 crime types overlapped spatially. Hot spots of different crime types were not found to overlap much.
Valuing Equal Protection in Aviation Security Screening
Kenneth Nguyen, Heather Rosoff & Richard John
Risk Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
The growing number of anti-terrorism policies has elevated public concerns about discrimination. Within the context of airport security screening, the current study examines how American travelers value the principle of equal protection by quantifying the “equity premium” that they are willing to sacrifice to avoid screening procedures that result in differential treatments. In addition, we applied the notion of procedural justice to explore the effect of alternative selective screening procedures on the value of equal protection. Two-hundred and twenty-two respondents were randomly assigned to one of three selective screening procedures: (1) randomly, (2) using behavioral indicators, or (3) based on demographic characteristics. They were asked to choose between airlines using either an equal or a discriminatory screening procedure. While the former requires all passengers to be screened in the same manner, the latter mandates all passengers undergo a quick primary screening and, in addition, some passengers are selected for a secondary screening based on a predetermined selection criterion. Equity premiums were quantified in terms of monetary cost, wait time, convenience, and safety compromise. Results show that equity premiums varied greatly across respondents, with many indicating little willingness to sacrifice to avoid inequitable screening, and a smaller minority willing to sacrifice anything to avoid the discriminatory screening. The selective screening manipulation was effective in that equity premiums were greater under selection by demographic characteristics compared to the other two procedures.
Shooting Stars: Estimating the Career Productivity Trajectories of Patrol Officers
Luke Bonkiewicz
Police Quarterly, June 2017, Pages 164-188
Abstract:
This study analyzes two decades of data from a municipal police agency and describes the average patrol officer career productivity trajectory. We find that declines in productivity begin immediately after the first year of service and worsen over the course of officers’ careers. After their 20th year, patrol officers generate 88% fewer directed patrols, 50% fewer traffic warnings, 58% fewer traffic citations, 41% fewer warrant arrests, and 57% fewer misdemeanor arrests compared to officers with 1 year of experience. Using a patrol officer productivity metric called Z-score per Productive Time (Z-PRO), we estimate that each additional year of service decreases an officer’s overall productivity by about 2%. Z-PRO also indicates that after 21 years of service, an average officer will be approximately 35% less productive overall than an officer with 1 year of service.
Man vs. machine: An investigation of speeding ticket disparities based on gender and race
Sarah Marx Quintanar
Journal of Applied Economics, May 2017, Pages 1–28
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the extent to which police behavior in giving speeding tickets differs from the ticketing pattern of automated cameras, which provide an estimate of the population of speeders. The novel data are obtained from Lafayette, Louisiana court records, and provide specific details about the ticketed driver as well as a wide range of violation characteristics. In contrast to the automated cameras, the probability of a ticketed driver being female is consistently and significantly higher when the ticket was given by a police officer. For African-American drivers this effect is less robust, though in general still positive and significant. This implies that police use gender and race as a determining factor in issuing a speeding ticket. Potential behavioral reasons for this outcome are discussed. The validity of using automated cameras as a population measure for police-issued tickets is thoroughly investigated and supportive evidence is provided.
Counterproductive punishment: How prison gangs undermine state authority
Benjamin Lessing
Rationality and Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
State efforts to provide law and order can be counterproductive: mass-incarceration policies, while incapacitating and deterring individual criminals, can simultaneously strengthen collective criminal networks. Sophisticated prison gangs use promises of protection or punishment inside prison to influence and organize criminal activity on the street. Typical crime-reduction policies that make incarceration likelier and sentences harsher can increase prison gangs’ power over street-level members and affiliates, a formal model shows. Leading cases from the Americas corroborate these predictions: periods of sharply rising incarceration, driven partly by anti-gang laws, preceded qualitative leaps in prison-gang power on the street. Critically, prison gangs use this capacity not only to govern and tax criminal markets but also to win leverage over state officials by orchestrating terror attacks, intentionally curtailing quotidian violence, or both. Thus, even if increased incarceration leads to reduced crime, it may do so by strengthening prison-gang power at the expense of state authority.
How Priming Innocence Influences Public Opinion on Police Misconduct and False Convictions: A Research Note
Kathleen Donovan & Charles Klahm
Criminal Justice Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Issues of innocence have become more salient to the public in recent years, including the problem of police misconduct. However, citizens also tend to be supportive of the police, perceiving them as ethical, honest, and trustworthy. Using a survey experiment with a nationally representative sample, we explore the degree to which public opinion toward police misconduct is influenced by priming respondents on the issue of innocence. We find that reminding citizens of these issues increases their willingness to admit police misconduct that contributes to this problem by roughly 7 percentage points overall. Moreover, this effect is driven by conservatives and, to a lesser extent, moderates, presumably because liberals do not need priming. In contrast, the efficacy of the prime was not affected (i.e., moderated) by the race of the respondent. We place these results in the context of the current debate regarding police use of force as well as the ideological divide in rhetoric surrounding the recent string of high-profile police shootings.
Going to Pot? The Impact of Dispensary Closures on Crime
Tom Chang & Mireille Jacobson
Journal of Urban Economics, July 2017, Pages 120–136
Abstract:
Jurisdictions that sanction medical or, more recently, recreational marijuana use often allow retail sales at dispensaries. Dispensaries are controversial as many believe they contribute to local crime. To assess this claim, we analyze the short-term mass closing of hundreds of medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles. Contrary to popular wisdom, we find an immediate increase in crime around dispensaries ordered to close relative to those allowed to remain open. The increase is specific to the type of crime most plausibly deterred by bystanders, and is correlated with neighborhood walkability. We find a similar pattern of results for temporary restaurant closures due to health code violations. A likely common mechanism is that “eyes upon the street” deter some types of crime.
The Impact of Legalized Casino Gambling on Crime
Mark Nichols & Mehmet Serkan Tosun
Regional Science and Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The expansion of casino gambling has been controversial, with the economic and crime impacts heavily debated. Yet, few studies have considered the impact casinos have beyond the border of their host community or state. Using county-level data between 1994 and 2012, this paper examines the impact that casino legalization had on crime rates using a Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) to account for spatial dependence. A difference-in-differences model suggests that in the long term commercial casinos are associated with no significant change in crime in their host county, but crimes in surrounding adjacent counties do significantly increase. Indian casinos in contrast are associated with long-term reductions in crime in their surrounding counties. However, a distributed lag model, used to detect year-to-year variation in crime, reveals that both commercial and Indian casinos are associated with increases in crime in the years immediately following their opening. For commercial casinos these increases were statistically significant in the host county for six years, whereas for Indian casinos a statistically significant increase occurred in the first two years after opening. Impacts on surrounding adjacent counties were also significant but generally for fewer years. These initial increases in crime were offset by significant decreases in crime many years later explaining the long-term pattern captured in the difference-in-differences model.
Danger zone: Land use and the geography of neighborhood crime
Tate Twinam
Journal of Urban Economics, July 2017, Pages 104–119
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of residential density and mixed land use on crime using a high–resolution dataset from Chicago over the period 2008–2013. I employ a novel instrumental variable strategy based on the city’s 1923 zoning code. I find that commercial uses lead to more street crime in their immediate vicinity, particularly in more walkable neighborhoods. However, this effect is strongly offset by population density; dense mixed–use areas are safer than typical residential areas. Additionally, much of the commercial effect is driven by liquor stores and late–hour bars. I discuss the implications for zoning policy.