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Economics of Crime Control

NCJ Number
81400
Author(s)
L Phillips; H L Votey
Date Published
1981
Length
309 pages
Annotation
An economic model and econometric techniques are used to examine how public funds and human resources can be allocated to optimize the control of crime. As an aspect of this analysis, the book also considers the effects of deterrence on crime.
Abstract
The economic model views crime generation as a system whose output is the level of offenses; its inputs are socioeconomic and demographic causal factors, the impact of penalties, and the likelihoods of apprehension and punishment. A second interacting system is criminal justice. Its outputs (e.g., likelihood of apprehension) are inputs to the crime generation system. Another linkage is criminal offenses. Produced as outputs of the crime generation system, offenses affect criminal justice manpower decisions. Offenses per capita, weighted to reflect social losses, provide a measure of the cost of criminal activities. Once in place, the model is used to analyze a number of policy issues, including establishing control policies, determining monetary measures of the seriousness of crime, discerning community priorities for fighting crime, choosing between alternative drug control programs, and extracting useful information from crime data. The econometric techniques are applied to estimate and test crucial parameters in the model and are concerned with the effect on crime rates of economic opportunities for youth, the influence of rising crime rates on police effectiveness, the cost of police effectiveness, and the possibility for deterring violence. Additional issues examined are the effect of handgun control on homicide rates, the relative merits of jail and probation, the rate of police manpower growth needed to keep pace with crime rates, and the necessary data needed for planning an optimum level of public safety. The analysis starts with single-equation estimations and builds to system and multiequation models. The statistical results are based on several data sets with the earlier studies using time series from the 1950's and 1960's. The estimation of the more complex model is based on cross-sectional data from the 1960 and 1970 census for the counties of California. Figures, tables, chapter notes, and chapter appendixes are provided. An index and a bibliography listing about 200 references are also included.