Usual suspects
Do Traffic Tickets Reduce Motor Vehicle Accidents? Evidence from a Natural Experiment
Dara Lee Luca
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the effect of traffic tickets on motor vehicle accidents. Ordinary least squares (OLS) estimate may be upward biased because police officers tend to focus on areas where and periods when there is heavy traffic and thus higher rates of accidents. This paper exploits the dramatic increase in tickets during the Click-it-or-Ticket campaign to identify the causal impact of tickets on accidents using data from Massachusetts. I find that tickets significantly reduce accidents and nonfatal injuries. I provide suggestive evidence that tickets have a larger impact at night and on female drivers.
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Bryanna Hahn Fox & David Farrington
Criminal Justice and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study evaluated the effect on burglary arrest rates when using statistically derived behavioral profiles for burglary offenses and offenders in active police investigations. To do this, an experiment was conducted where one police agency that used the profiles was compared with three matched police agencies that did not. Burglary arrest rates were studied 4 years before and 1 year after the profile was implemented. Results show that the arrest rates for the treated agency increased by 3 times as compared with the control agencies. The interaction effect between treatment/control agency and pretest/posttest arrest rates was significant, showing that the experimental intervention had an effect, after controlling for pre-existing differences between the agencies. These findings on the utility of offender profiling, the first to be derived from an experiment conducted in active police investigations, suggest that the statistically based behavioral profiles could be a useful tool in increasing arrest rates for police.
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Policing Domestic Violence in the Post-SARP Era: The Impact of a Domestic Violence Police Unit
Lyn Exum et al.
Crime & Delinquency, October 2014, Pages 999-1032
Abstract:
During the Spousal Assault Replication Program, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, was identified as a site where arrest did not deter misdemeanor domestic violence. Shortly after these findings were published, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department developed a Domestic Violence (DV) unit to combat the problem of intimate partner violence. The mission of the Charlotte DV unit is to reduce future offending through intensive investigation and victim assistance. The current study evaluates the impact of the Charlotte DV unit versus standard patrol on official accounts of offender recidivism in a random sample of 891 domestic violence cases. Controlling for offender demographics, prior criminal history, case severity, and additional criminal justice responses, suspects processed through the DV unit had significantly lower rates of re-offending across an 18- to 30-month follow-up period. Theoretical explanations for the DV unit effect are proposed.
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Falling Behind? Children’s Early Grade Retention after Paternal Incarceration
Kristin Turney & Anna Haskins
Sociology of Education, October 2014, Pages 241-258
Abstract:
A growing literature documents the myriad penalties for children of incarcerated fathers, but relatively little is known about how paternal incarceration contributes to educational outcomes in early and middle childhood. In this article, we use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to provide the first estimates of the relationship between paternal incarceration and children’s grade retention in elementary school. Propensity score matching models indicate that children of incarcerated fathers are more likely to experience early grade retention than their counterparts. This relationship is not driven by test scores or behavior problems; preliminary evidence suggests this relationship may be driven by teachers’ perceptions of children’s academic proficiency. These findings suggest that elementary school teachers may play an important role in the lives of children experiencing paternal incarceration and, more generally, highlight yet another way in which the large-scale incarceration of men limits their children’s potential.
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Michael Siegel et al.
American Journal of Public Health, October 2014, Pages 1912-1919
Objectives: We examined the relationship between gun ownership and stranger versus nonstranger homicide rates.
Methods: Using data from the Supplemental Homicide Reports of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports for all 50 states for 1981 to 2010, we modeled stranger and nonstranger homicide rates as a function of state-level gun ownership, measured by a proxy, controlling for potential confounders. We used a negative binomial regression model with fixed effects for year, accounting for clustering of observations among states by using generalized estimating equations.
Results: We found no robust, statistically significant correlation between gun ownership and stranger firearm homicide rates. However, we found a positive and significant association between gun ownership and nonstranger firearm homicide rates. The incidence rate ratio for nonstranger firearm homicide rate associated with gun ownership was 1.014 (95% confidence interval = 1.009, 1.019).
Conclusions: Our findings challenge the argument that gun ownership deters violent crime, in particular, homicides.
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The impact of state and federal assault weapons bans on public mass shootings
Mark Gius
Applied Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of federal and state assault weapons bans on public mass shootings. Using a Poisson effect model and data for the period 1982 to 2011, it was found that both state and federal assault weapons bans have statistically significant and negative effects on mass shooting fatalities but that only the federal assault weapons ban had a negative effect on mass shooting injuries. This study is one of the first studies that looks solely at the effects of assault weapons bans on public mass shootings.
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Bandy Lee et al.
Aggression and Violent Behavior, forthcoming
Objectives: Our goal was to identify if there might be associations between a major public health problem, i.e., violent deaths, and a potential macro-level determinant, i.e., political party in office.
Methods: Vital statistics, labor statistics, and GDP data were obtained for the years 1900-2010. Independent t tests were used to compare homicide, suicide, and total violent death rates during Republican and Democratic administrations and between states voting for Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. Correlation and hidden Markov modeling were used to assess the relationships among party of the president and changes in unemployment rate, GDP, and violent death.
Results: The party of the president was significantly associated with annual changes in suicide and homicide rates, unemployment rates, and GDP (p < 0.001 to p < 0.05, depending on the measure and time lag), with higher violent death and unemployment increases being associated with Republican presidencies and higher GDP with Democratic ones. Adjusting for unemployment and GDP reduced but did not eliminate party effect. Suicide and homicide rates were higher in states that voted for the Republican candidate for presidenby than in states that voted for the Democratic candidate (p < 0.0001 and p < 0.07).
Conclusions: Violent deaths were associated with an increase under Republican presidents and a decrease under Democratic presidents, were higher in states that vote for Republican than for Democratic presidential candidates, and increased alongside increasing unemployment and falling national GDP. As with heart disease, obesity and cancer, identified associations with environmental factors can increase understanding of the public health problem and point to ways of reducing it. Future research beyond the boundaries of the United States could help elucidate the relationship between government, socioeconomic policy orientation, and violent death rates.
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Following Incarceration, Most Released Offenders Never Return to Prison
William Rhodes et al.
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent studies suggest that 50% of offenders released from state prisons return to prison within 3 to 5 years. In contrast, this article shows that roughly two of every three offenders who enter and exit prison will never return to prison. Using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ newly revised National Corrections Reporting Program, we examine prison admissions and releases over a 13-year period in 17 states and over shorter periods in other states to determine the rate at which individual offenders return to prison. We distinguish between the traditional event-based sampling methods for studying recidivism and our alternative offender-based method, explaining how each is useful but how the two approaches answer different policy questions.
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Correctional destabilization and jail violence: The consequences of prison depopulation legislation
Jonathan Caudill et al.
Journal of Criminal Justice, November–December 2014, Pages 500–506
Purpose: This study explored the effects of prison depopulation on local jail violence through a general systems perspective – where an abrupt shift in the processing of offenders had the potential to create ripple effects through other organizations – of the criminal justice system.
Methods: In 2011, California passed the Criminal Justice Realignment legislation aimed to reduce prison population by making low-level felony offenders ineligible for state incarceration and diverting those already in state prison for the included offenses from state to county-level community supervision once paroled. This study incorporated bivariate and negative binomial regression analyses to model officially-recorded county jail panel data to estimate the effects of state prison depopulation on California county jails.
Results: Findings demonstrated support for the general systems framework as there was a significant decrease in jail utility in the bivariate analysis and a significant increase in jail violence in the multivariate analysis associated with passage of California’s prison depopulation legislation.
Conclusions: The results supported the notion of an interconnected criminal justice system. Policy implications include the consequences of increased violence on jail operations, the potential for a cadre of habitual offenders, and generalizing these findings to the community.
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Glenn Walters
Criminal Justice and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Interactive and additive terms for substance misuse and crime were used to predict recidivism in 1,435 male inmates. Negative binomial regression revealed that although the additive term consistently predicted general recidivism and the presence of new charges, the interaction term consistently failed to predict these same two outcomes. The additive model continued to predict general recidivism and new charges when age and prior convictions were both controlled and when prior substance misuse and crime were entered separately. Both the substance misuse and crime components predicted income (property and drug) offenses, but only the crime component predicted person offenses. These results have implications for assessing and treating substance-involved offenders and suggest that the two components of the “worst of both worlds” hypothesis accumulate rather than interact in their effect on future recidivism. Although the effect depends on both components, one component may be stronger than the other in predicting certain outcomes.
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New Parochialism, Sources of Community Investment, and the Control of Street Crime
David Ramey & Emily Shrider
Criminology & Public Policy, May 2014, Pages 193–216
Abstract:
We examined Seattle, Washington's Neighborhood Matching Fund (NMF), a unique neighborhood improvement program that provides city funding for projects organized within neighborhoods. We found an inverse relationship between NMF funding and violent crime rates, a relationship that is stronger in poorer neighborhoods. The relationship also is stronger as funds accumulate within the neighborhoods over time. These findings suggest that investment and neighborhood participation can have both short-term and long-term crime reduction effects.
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Keep the Kids Inside: Juvenile Curfews, Bad Weather, and Urban Gun Violence
Jillian Carr & Jennifer Doleac
University of Virginia Working Paper, August 2014
Abstract:
Gun violence is an important problem in many American cities, large and small. Due to limited data, it has been difficult to convincingly test the impacts of government policies on the quantity and geography of gunfire. This paper is the first to use a new source of data on gunfire incidents, and tests the incapacitation effects of two interventions in Washington, DC: (1) juvenile curfews, and (2) rain. Both work primarily by keeping would-be offenders indoors. The former is a common, but extremely controversial, policy used in cities across the United States, and its impact is likely highly sensitive to how it is enforced. The latter is an intervention over which we have no control, but can be thought of as a perfectly-enforced incapacitation "policy": anyone who stays outside during a rainstorm gets wet. We use exogenous variation in the hours affected by each intervention to estimate its causal impact on gun violence and reported crime. We find minimal evidence that juvenile curfews are effective, but rainstorms result in large, statistically-significant reductions in gun violence and other crime. We interpret these results as evidence that incapacitation works as a crime-prevention tool, and a reminder that implementation and enforcement are key determinants of a policy’s success.
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Roderick Jones & William Alex Pridemore
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
The growing empirical literature on the effects on crime of the recent housing crisis in the United States provides inconsistent results for a direct effect. Furthermore, no longitudinal studies examine the association between home vacancy and crime during the U.S. housing crisis. To address this question, we used a sample of 126 major metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) within the United States for the period 2005-2009 and estimated random and fixed effects models. Results indicated that increasing rates of home vacancy during the housing crisis were significantly associated with burglary rates within and between MSAs but had no association with robbery rates after controlling for other important crime covariates. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of these findings.
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Is the Highway Patrol Really Tougher on Out-of-State Drivers? An Empirical Analysis
Michael Roach
B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using speeding citations from the North Carolina State Highway Patrol, this paper examines whether out-of-state drivers face different enforcement standards than in-state drivers. Discrimination effects are identified by assuming exogenous differences in license plate design affect troopers’ abilities to identify out-of-state drivers. The pattern of citations for difficult to identify out-of-state drivers is significantly different from (indeed, stricter than) the pattern for more easily identifiable out-of-state drivers. I take this as evidence of troopers attempting to apply different enforcement standards to out-of-state drivers. One explanation is troopers attempting to deter in-state speeders whose behavior may be more sensitive to enforcement.
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Misalignment In Supervision: Implementing Risk/Needs Assessment Instruments in Probation
Jill Viglione, Danielle Rudes & Faye Taxman Criminal
Justice and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Risk and needs assessment (RNA) tools are well regarded as a critical component of a community corrections organization implementing evidence-based practices (EBPs), given the potential impact of using such tools on offender-level and system outcomes. The current study examines how probation officers (POs) use a validated RNA tool in two adult probation settings. Using interview and observational data, this study explores how POs use an assessment tool during all facets of their work from preplanning, routine administrative tasks, and face-to-face case management interactions with probation clients. Findings suggest POs overwhelmingly administer the RNA tool, but rarely link the RNA scores to key case management or supervision decisions. These findings highlight some of the challenges and complexities associated with the application of RNA tools in everyday practice. Study implications emphasize the need to modify current probation practices to create a synergy between the RNA and related supervision practices. Findings from this study contribute to a better appreciation for how the new penology integrates risk management with client-centered case models to improve outcomes.