IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ifs/fistud/v22y2001i1p1-40.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What we spend and what we get: Public and private provision of crime prevention and criminal justice

Author

Listed:
  • Ann Dryden Witte
  • Robert Witt

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a number of issues regarding crime prevention and criminal justice. We begin by considering how crime is measured and present both general and specific evidence on the level of crime in a variety of countries. Crime is pervasive and varies substantially across countries. We outline the arguments for some public role in crime prevention, enforcement, prosecution, defence, adjudication and punishment. We consider the relative roles of the public and private sectors in crime control and criminal justice. We discuss various measures for the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. We conclude by suggesting some potential areas for research.

Suggested Citation

  • Ann Dryden Witte & Robert Witt, 2001. "What we spend and what we get: Public and private provision of crime prevention and criminal justice," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 22(1), pages 1-40, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:ifs:fistud:v:22:y:2001:i:1:p:1-40
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ifs.org.uk/fs/articles/0033a.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anderson, David A, 1999. "The Aggregate Burden of Crime," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(2), pages 611-642, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Loureiro, Paulo R.A. & Mendonça, Mário Jorge Cardoso de & Moreira, Tito Belchior Silva & Sachsida, Adolfo, 2009. "Crime, economic conditions, social interactions and family heritage," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 202-209, September.
    2. Adolfo Sachsida & Mario Mendonça & Paulo Loureiro & Maria Gutierrez, 2010. "Inequality and criminality revisited: further evidence from Brazil," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 93-109, August.
    3. Ben Vollaard & Pierre Koning, 2005. "Estimating police effectiveness with individual victimisation data," CPB Discussion Paper 47, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    4. Ryan S. Johnson & Shawn Kantor & Price V. Fishback, 2007. "Striking at the Roots of Crime: The Impact of Social Welfare Spending on Crime During the Great Depression," NBER Working Papers 12825, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Ben Vollaard, 2005. "Police numbers up, crime rates down. The effect of police on crime in the Netherlands, 1996-2003," Law and Economics 0501006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Carneiro, Francisco Galrao & Loureiro, Paulo R.A. & Sachsida, Adolfo, 2005. "Crime and social interactions: a developing country case study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 311-318, May.
    7. Adolfo Sachsida & Mario Jorge C. de Mendonça & Fabio Stallivieri, 2007. "Ex-Convicts Face Multiple Labor Market Punishments: Estimates of Peer-Group and Stigma Effects Using Equations of Returns to Schooling," Economia, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics], vol. 8(3), pages .503-520.
    8. Price V. Fishback & Ryan S. Johnson & Shawn Kantor, 2010. "Striking at the Roots of Crime: The Impact of Welfare Spending on Crime during the Great Depression," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 53(4), pages 715-740.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. van Ours, Jan C. & Williams, Jenny & Ward, Shannon, 2015. "Bad Behavior: Delinquency, Arrest and Early School Leaving," CEPR Discussion Papers 10755, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Entorf, H. & Winker, P., 2008. "Investigating the drugs-crime channel in economics of crime models: Empirical evidence from panel data of the German States," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 8-22, March.
    3. David Figlio & Jens Ludwig, 2012. "Sex, Drugs, and Catholic Schools: Private Schooling and Non-Market Adolescent Behaviors," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 13(4), pages 385-415, November.
    4. Diana L Carreon-Guzman & Jorge Garza-Rodriguez & David R Garza-Turrubiates & Ricardo A Gonzalez-Camargo & Eugenio Lozano-Castillo, 2015. "The effects of crime on the Mexican economy: a vector error correction model," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(2), pages 959-967.
    5. Ezra Friedman & Abraham L. Wickelgren, 2006. "Bayesian Juries and The Limits to Deterrence," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 70-86, April.
    6. Altindag, Duha T., 2012. "Crime and unemployment: Evidence from Europe," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 145-157.
    7. S. Ravid & Suman Basuroy, 2003. "Managerial Objectives, the R-Rating Puzzle and the Production of Violent Films," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm383, Yale School of Management.
    8. Ghulam, Yaseen, 2021. "Institutions and firms’ technological changes and productivity growth," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    9. Fafchamps, Marcel & Minten, Bart, 2006. "Crime, Transitory Poverty, and Isolation: Evidence from Madagascar," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(3), pages 579-603, April.
    10. Louis Hotte & Tanguy Van Ypersele, 2008. "Individual protection against property crime: decomposing the effects of protection observability," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 41(2), pages 537-563, May.
    11. Golz, Michael & D'Amico, Daniel J., 2018. "Market concentration in the international drug trade," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 28-42.
    12. Gnutzmann, Hinnerk & McCarthy, Killian J. & Unger, Brigitte, 2010. "Dancing with the devil: Country size and the incentive to tolerate money laundering," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 244-252, September.
    13. Compton, Andrew, 2019. "Decomposing the Societal Opportunity Costs of Property Crime," MPRA Paper 97002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Daniela Barni & Alessio Vieno & Michele Roccato & Silvia Russo, 2016. "Basic Personal Values, the Country’s Crime Rate and the Fear of Crime," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 129(3), pages 1057-1074, December.
    15. Bethencourt, Carlos, 2022. "Crime and social expenditure: A political economic approach," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    16. Daniel Cerqueira & Rodrigo R. Soares, 2016. "The Welfare Cost of Homicides in Brazil: Accounting for Heterogeneity in the Willingness to Pay for Mortality Reductions," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(3), pages 259-276, March.
    17. Paolo Buonanno & Daniel Montolio & Josep Raya-Vílchez, 2013. "Housing prices and crime perception," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 305-321, August.
    18. Deiana, C, 2016. "Local Labour Market Effects of Unemployment on Crime Induced by Trade Shocks," Economics Discussion Papers 16529, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    19. Thomas Bourveau & Renaud Coulomb & Marc Sangnier, 2021. "Political Connections and White-Collar Crime: Evidence from Insider Trading in France," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(5), pages 2543-2576.
    20. Kangoh Lee & Santiago M. Pinto, 2009. "Crime In A Multi‐Jurisdictional Model With Private And Public Prevention," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(5), pages 977-996, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    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:ifs:fistud:v:22:y:2001:i:1:p:1-40. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Emma Hyman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifsssuk.html .

    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.