IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v238y2024ics0165176524001903.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Lame duck law enforcement

Author

Listed:
  • Losak, Shannon R.
  • Makowsky, Michael D.

Abstract

Election losses for incumbent sheriffs result in lame ducks who oversee local law enforcement for as long as 10 months before the next sheriff takes office. Monthly arrest rates decline 11% subsequent to a primary election loss and 20.3% after losing a general election; violent crime arrests drop 24.8% in the two months following a general election loss. Our results demonstrate the costs of electoral turnover where day-to-day duties are sensitive to effort and conscientiousness.

Suggested Citation

  • Losak, Shannon R. & Makowsky, Michael D., 2024. "Lame duck law enforcement," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 238(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:238:y:2024:i:c:s0165176524001903
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111707
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176524001903
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111707?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sheriffs; Elections; Lame duck;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • H70 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - General
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:238:y:2024:i:c:s0165176524001903. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.