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Why the Police Have an Effect on Violent Crime After All: Evidence from the British Crime Survey

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  • Ben Vollaard
  • Joseph Hamed

Abstract

We present evidence that the use of police statistics as a source of crime data can seriously bias empirical tests of the model of deterrence. We use data for 21 areas in England and Wales in 2001-8. In addition to police-recorded crime data, we use victim-reported crime data from the British Crime Survey that are unaffected by changes in public reporting of crime and police recording of crime. We find that the estimated effect of the number of police on recorded and victim-reported crime is similar for property crime but different for violent crime. Our findings suggest that higher numbers of police not only reduce crime rates but also increase the share of crime, and in particular violent crime, that finds its way into police statistics. The resulting estimation bias is found to be large.

Suggested Citation

  • Ben Vollaard & Joseph Hamed, 2012. "Why the Police Have an Effect on Violent Crime After All: Evidence from the British Crime Survey," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(4), pages 901-924.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/666614
    DOI: 10.1086/666614
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    3. Gupta, Manish & Sachdeva, Payal, 2017. "Economic, Demographic, Deterrent Variables And Crime Rate In India," MPRA Paper 80181, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 14 Jul 2017.
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    8. Pina-Sánchez, Jose & Buil-Gil, David & brunton-smith, ian & Cernat, Alexandru, 2021. "The impact of measurement error in models using police recorded crime rates," SocArXiv ydf4b, Center for Open Science.
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    12. Evan M. Calford & Gregory DeAngelo, 2023. "Ambiguity and enforcement," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(2), pages 304-338, April.
    13. Harvey, Anna & Mattia, Taylor, 2024. "Reducing racial disparities in crime victimization: Evidence from employment discrimination litigation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
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