Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces After a Terrorist...

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Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces After a Terrorist Attack
Classical criminology assumes that criminals are rational beings who weigh the costs and benefits of their actions. Gary Becker (1968) produced the first fully fledged theory of crime based on rational behavior. His research led to an upsurge of interest in the economics of criminal behavior [see, for example, Isaac Ehrlich (1973), Ann Witte (1980), Ehrlich and George Brower (1987), James Andreoni (1991), Richard Freeman (1996), Steven Levitt (1997), Pablo Fajnzylber et al. (2000), inter alia]. One of the central predictions of Becker’s theory is that crime will decrease when police presence increases. A basic problem with this prediction is that it has largely failed to find empirical support. In a survey of the literature, Samuel Cameron (1988) reports that in 18 out of 22 papers surveyed researchers found either a positive effect of police presence on crime or no relationship between these variables. More recent surveys by Thomas Marvell and Carlisle Moody (1996) and John Eck and Edward Maguire (2000) reach similar conclusions. There is, however, a serious endogeneity problem with these studies that arises from the simultaneous determination of crime and police presence (see Franklin Fisher and Daniel Nagin, 1978). It is likely that the government of a city in which the crime rate increases will hire more police officers. Areas beset by high crime will thus end up with more police officers than areas with low crime rates, introducing a positive bias in the police coefficient in a crime regression. A central challenge in the crime literature has been to break this endogeneity in order to identify causal effects of police on crime. Two recent papers use a time-series strategy to address this problem. Using data for the United States, Marvell and Moody (1996) find Granger-causation between crime and police running in both directions. In a similar vein, Hope Corman and H. Naci Mocan (2000) exploit high-frequency data for New York City to show that increases in the number of police officers cause a reduction in one out of five crime categories (specifically, burglary). Monthly data are used because hiring and training delays in the response of the police authority to an increase in crime will mitigate simultaneity bias present in low-frequency data. In order to

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Robert · Accepted Answer

In this paper we present an approach to estimate the effect of time, place and police on car theft 
in the city of Buenos Aires. Car theft is the most common crime in the city of Buenos Aires 
which is 87 percent of crime that are reported to the police, compared to only 29 percent for all 
types of crime. Ninety-four percent of Buenos Aires car thefts occur in the street. Following the 
terrorists attacked the main Jewish center AMIA, on which 85 people died and more than 300 
wounded, the federal government assigned police protection to every Jewish building in the city 
of Buenos Aires. It is noted that a crime like car theft is expected to be more sensitive to the 
presence of police. Most car thefts occur after a brief period of surveillance of the intended 
victim. Criminals concentrating their attention on mobile victims might miss the presence of 
police. Therefore, are the time, place of police in the nearly area can affect car theft? These are 
the questions that we are to find an answer.      
The author used the fixed effect approach as month and block are treated as fixed parameters. 
The instrumental variable is used to avoid simultaneity.  
The information on the locations of each Jewish institution in the neighborhoods of the city of 
Buenos Aires are collected and police protection on that place is recorded. Then the effect of 
presence of police on car theft is estimated. The information that have been gathered on the car 
thefts in each block of the three selected neighborhood of the city of Buenos Aires. It has been 
recorded the presence of Jewish institution in the block and the presence of police in that 
institution. It is also recorded the presence of public building or embassy, bank and gas station in 
each block. The sample information on these are collected for the nine months period from April, 
1994 to December, 1994.    
The variables for this study are defined as follow: 
observ    = block id 
barrio    = neighborhood 
calle     = street 
altura    = street numbering 
institu1  = dummy variable with 1 if Jewish institution in the block or 0 otherwise 
institu3  = dummy variable with 1 if Jewish institution one block away or 0 otherwise 
distanci  = block distance to closest institution 
edpub     = dummy variable with 1 if there is any public building/embassy 
estserv   = dummy variable with 1 if there is any gas station 
banco     = dummy variable with 1 if there is any bank 
totrob    = car theft 
mes       = month  
We want to study here the effect of presence of police on car theft and the effect of time and 
place of the car theft on the incidence. 
The hypotheses that we want to explore in this article are: 
1. Is the presence of police is related with car theft. 
2. Is neighborhood is related with car theft. 
3. Does car theft varies with months. 
4. Is the distance to protected institution is related with car theft.  
We present the bar plots of the car theft in respect of different variables.

Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces After a Terrorist Attack Classical criminology assumes that criminals are rational beings who weigh the costs and benefits of...

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