In this paper we look at links between police resources and crime in a different way to theexisting economics of crime work. To do so we focus on a policy intervention - the StreetCrime Initiative - that was introduced in England and Wales in 2002. This allocatedadditional resources to some police force areas to combat street crime, whereas other forcesdid not receive any additional funding. Estimates derived from several empirical strategiesshow that robberies did fall significantly in SCI police forces relative to non-SCI forces afterthe initiative was introduced. Moreover, the policy seems to have been a cost effective one.There is some heterogeneity in this positive net social benefit across different SCI policeforces, suggesting that some police forces may have made better use of the extra resourcesthan others. Overall, we reach the conclusion that increased police resources do in fact leadto lower crime, at least in the context of the SCI programme we study.
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Paper provided by Centre for Economic Performance, LSE in its series CEP Discussion Papers with number
dp0680.
Find related papers by JEL classification: H00 - Public Economics - - General - - - General H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
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