IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/10776.html

Heat and Law Enforcement

Author

Listed:
  • Behrer,Arnold Patrick
  • Bolotnyy,Valentin

Abstract

Using administrative criminal records from Texas, this paper shows how high temperatures affect the decision making of police officers, prosecutors, and judges. It finds that police reduce the number of arrests made per reported crime on the hottest days and that arrests made on these days are more likely to be dismissed in court. For prosecutors, high temperature on the day they announce criminal charges does not appear to affect the nature and severity of the charges. However, judges dismiss fewer cases, issue longer prison sentences, and levy higher fines whenruling on hot days. The results suggest that the psychological and cognitive consequences ofexposure to high temperatures have meaningful consequences for criminal defendants as they interact with the criminal justice system.

Suggested Citation

  • Behrer,Arnold Patrick & Bolotnyy,Valentin, 2024. "Heat and Law Enforcement," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10776, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10776
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099818005162425050/pdf/IDU11f8ec38311d471489b18529195425ea06306.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jens Ludwig & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2021. "Fragile Algorithms and Fallible Decision-Makers: Lessons from the Justice System," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 35(4), pages 71-96, Fall.
    2. E. Somanathan & Rohini Somanathan & Anant Sudarshan & Meenu Tewari, 2021. "The Impact of Temperature on Productivity and Labor Supply: Evidence from Indian Manufacturing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(6), pages 1797-1827.
    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. Ohms, Benjamin, 2025. "A Systematic Literature Review of Cognitive Biases in Workplace Decision-Making," SocArXiv 2kq9b_v1, Center for Open Science.
    2. Benjamin Ohms, 2025. "A Systematic Literature Review of Cognitive Biases in Workplace Decision-Making," International Journal of Business Administration, International Journal of Business Administration, Sciedu Press, vol. 16(3), pages 26-41, September.
    3. Srivastava, Bhavya & Tafere, Kibrom & Behrer, A. Patrick, 2026. "High temperature and learning outcomes: Evidence from Ethiopia," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).

    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. Carolin Kroeger, 2023. "Heat is associated with short-term increases in household food insecurity in 150 countries and this is mediated by income," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(10), pages 1777-1786, October.
    2. Najeebullah Khan & Rajab Houmsi & Muhammad Shazril I. Ibrahim & Shamsuddin Shahid, 2026. "Impact of heat stress on outdoor labor productivity in peninsular malaysia: a spatio-temporal assessment," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 122(8), pages 1-28, April.
    3. Wang, Meng & Zhang, Shiying, 2024. "High temperatures and traffic accident crimes: Evidence from more than 470,000 offenses in China," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    4. Tobias Kranz & Hamza Bennani & Matthias Neuenkirch, 2024. "Monetary Policy and Climate Change: Challenges and the Role of Major Central Banks," Research Papers in Economics 2024-01, University of Trier, Department of Economics.
    5. Das Gupta, Amlan & Datta, Ashokankur & Gupta, Ridhima, 2025. "Higher temperatures and household nutrition: Evidence from India," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    6. Sterner, Thomas & Ewald, Jens & Sterner, Erik, 2024. "Economists and the climate," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    7. Tarsia, Romano, 2024. "Heterogeneous effects of weather shocks on firm economic performance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 124251, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Grover,Arti Goswami & Kahn,Matthew Edwin, 2024. "Firm Adaptation to Climate Risk in the Developing World," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10797, The World Bank.
    9. Arpit Shah & Anish Sugathan & Deepak Malghan & Rockli Kim & S. V. Subramanian, 2025. "Spatiotemporal changes in heat stress exposure in India, 1981-2023," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-11, December.
    10. Chi, Yeguang & He, Jingbin & Ma, Xinru & Wu, Fei, 2023. "Air pollution and institutional investors' valuation bias during initial public offerings," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    11. Intraligi, Valerio & Biagetti, Marco & Principi, Andrea, 2025. "Are older workers more likely to exit employment following unexpected heat waves?," EconStor Preprints 318649, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    12. Bressler, R. Daniel & Papp, Anna & Sarmiento, Luis & Shrader, Jeffrey G. & Wilson, Andrew J., 2025. "Working Under the Sun: The Role of Occupation in Temperature-Related Mortality in Mexico," IZA Discussion Papers 17759, IZA Network @ LISER.
    13. Kumar, Naveen & Maiti, Dibyendu, 2025. "Climate change, state capacity and uneven growth: A disaggregated analysis of India," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    14. Guo, Dongmei & Li, Qin & Liu, Peng & Shi, Xunpeng & Yu, Jian, 2023. "Power shortage and firm performance: Evidence from a Chinese city power shortage index," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    15. Behrer,Arnold Patrick & Bolotnyy,Valentin, 2022. "Heat, Crime, and Punishment," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9909, The World Bank.
    16. Andrew Ireland & David Johnston & Rachel Knott, 2024. "Impacts of Extreme Heat on Labor Force Dynamics," Papers 2024-01, Centre for Health Economics, Monash University.
    17. Olfa Zarrad & Hajer Chibani & Thouraya Jaballah & Kamel Helali, 2026. "Nonlinear climate-economic dynamics in the European union: the role of renewable energy and emissions in temperature-induced growth effects," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 1-29, December.
    18. Cosaert, Sam & Nieto Castro, Adrian & Tatsiramos, Konstantinos, 2023. "Temperature and the Timing of Work," IZA Discussion Papers 16480, IZA Network @ LISER.
    19. Yang, Lian-Xing & Zhang, Yin-Ting & Chen, Mo-Lei, 2025. "Impact of temperature variability on supply chain resilience in China: Mechanisms and insights," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 85(PA).
    20. Christopher Aitken & Erkal Ersoy, 2023. "War in Ukraine: The options for Europe's energy supply," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 887-896, April.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:wbk:wbrwps:10776. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.