{"id":2464,"date":"2020-12-01T16:45:41","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T00:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464"},"modified":"2020-12-01T16:45:41","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T00:45:41","slug":"more-cops-less-crime-big-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464","title":{"rendered":"More Cops, Less Crime, Big Data"},"content":{"rendered":"

Common sense tells us that more cops on the beat should reduce crime. That was why, at the peak of America’s crime rates, Bill Clinton’s promise to put 100,000 cops on the beat struck a resonant chord with a great many Americans. But while common sense is usually right it is not always, so empirical research is needed.<\/p>\n

Charles Lehman reports <\/a>in the City Journal on research by Sarit Weisburd of Tel Aviv University using GPS data from Dallas police cars. “Weisburd demonstrates that cutting police presence leads to a dramatic increase in crime and offers compelling evidence that this effect is driven by a drop in routine patrols. Cops on the beat drive down crime.”<\/p>\n

Research on cause and effects in crime control is difficult because you cannot do controlled experiments. We have all seen this year how early studies on treatments for Covid-19 that were not controlled studies were shown to be incorrect after the “gold standard” randomized controlled trials came in. The trouble with crime research is that there is no gold in them thar hills, so the bronze studies are typically all we ever get.<\/p>\n

The trouble with uncontrolled studies is that the result may be caused by outside factors as well as the factor you are trying to study, and sometimes the causation may run in the other direction. Suppose you simplistically look at the ratio of police to population and compare that with the crime rate. You might find that the high policing tends to go together with high crime rates. Does that mean that increased police presence increases crime rather than reducing it? It is more likely the other way around, i.e., that increased crime causes increased police presence. The chief sends more cops where the most crime is.<\/p>\n

So efforts to move up from the bronze to the silver often involve clever ways to measure correlations without these troublesome eddy currents of causation.<\/p>\n

Weisburd’s study is forthcoming in the\u00a0Review of Economics and Statistics<\/em> , a Harvard publication. A manuscript version<\/a> is on her website. She used GPS data on the Dallas police cars to know where the patrol car officers were throughout 2009. The police presence in a beat is reduced by a need to respond to a 911 call outside the beat. Many such calls are not crime-related, and the non-crime out-of-beat calls are therefore a factor that reduces police presence but not caused by crime. The crime-related 911 calls are the measure of crime.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that a 10% increase in police presence reduces violent crime by 9%, public disturbances by 6 to 7%, and burglaries by 5 to 6%.<\/p>\n

Of course, we should not base policy on a single study, but this one confirms what we have been told by others and by common sense.<\/p>\n

The folks who obsess over prison population have focused their efforts on reducing prison terms. Carried too far, that will inevitably increase crime, as the more honest of advocates for this position admit. See this paper<\/a>, reviewing Locked In<\/em> by John Pfaff.<\/p>\n

The better way to reduce prison populations is to reduce the number of crimes committed. The drop in crime since the peak is already having that effect. Putting more cops on the street could accelerate that downward trend. Instead, this year we have been hearing shrill calls to do just the opposite and “defund the police.”<\/p>\n

More cops and less crime will eventually mean fewer prisoners. Isn’t that something we can all agree on? It should be, but alas it is not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Common sense tells us that more cops on the beat should reduce crime. That was why, at the peak of America’s crime rates, Bill Clinton’s promise to put 100,000 cops on the beat struck a resonant chord with a great many Americans. But while common sense is usually right it is not always, so empirical research is needed. Charles Lehman reports in the City Journal on research by Sarit Weisburd of Tel Aviv University using GPS data from Dallas police cars. “Weisburd demonstrates that cutting police presence leads to a dramatic increase in crime and offers compelling evidence that this effect is driven by a drop in routine patrols. Cops on the beat drive down crime.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policing","category-studies"],"yoast_head":"\nMore Cops, Less Crime, Big Data - Crime & Consequences<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"More Cops, Less Crime, Big Data - Crime & Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Common sense tells us that more cops on the beat should reduce crime. That was why, at the peak of America’s crime rates, Bill Clinton’s promise to put 100,000 cops on the beat struck a resonant chord with a great many Americans. But while common sense is usually right it is not always, so empirical research is needed. Charles Lehman reports in the City Journal on research by Sarit Weisburd of Tel Aviv University using GPS data from Dallas police cars. “Weisburd demonstrates that cutting police presence leads to a dramatic increase in crime and offers compelling evidence that this effect is driven by a drop in routine patrols. Cops on the beat drive down crime.”\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Crime & Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CriminalJusticeLegalFoundation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-12-02T00:45:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/FB_DefaultLJ.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kent Scheidegger\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kent Scheidegger\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464\",\"name\":\"More Cops, Less Crime, Big Data - Crime & Consequences\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-12-02T00:45:41+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#\/schema\/person\/1ab62da9ed4ddd3a58d70c77eef37356\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"More Cops, Less Crime, Big Data\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/\",\"name\":\"Crime & Consequences\",\"description\":\"Crime and criminal law\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#\/schema\/person\/1ab62da9ed4ddd3a58d70c77eef37356\",\"name\":\"Kent Scheidegger\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.cjlf.org\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?author=1\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"More Cops, Less Crime, Big Data - Crime & Consequences","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"More Cops, Less Crime, Big Data - Crime & Consequences","og_description":"Common sense tells us that more cops on the beat should reduce crime. That was why, at the peak of America’s crime rates, Bill Clinton’s promise to put 100,000 cops on the beat struck a resonant chord with a great many Americans. But while common sense is usually right it is not always, so empirical research is needed. Charles Lehman reports in the City Journal on research by Sarit Weisburd of Tel Aviv University using GPS data from Dallas police cars. “Weisburd demonstrates that cutting police presence leads to a dramatic increase in crime and offers compelling evidence that this effect is driven by a drop in routine patrols. Cops on the beat drive down crime.”","og_url":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464","og_site_name":"Crime & Consequences","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CriminalJusticeLegalFoundation\/","article_published_time":"2020-12-02T00:45:41+00:00","og_image":[{"width":300,"height":400,"url":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/FB_DefaultLJ.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Kent Scheidegger","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Kent Scheidegger","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464","url":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464","name":"More Cops, Less Crime, Big Data - Crime & Consequences","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#website"},"datePublished":"2020-12-02T00:45:41+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#\/schema\/person\/1ab62da9ed4ddd3a58d70c77eef37356"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2464#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"More Cops, Less Crime, Big Data"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/","name":"Crime & Consequences","description":"Crime and criminal law","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/#\/schema\/person\/1ab62da9ed4ddd3a58d70c77eef37356","name":"Kent Scheidegger","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.cjlf.org"],"url":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?author=1"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2464"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2466,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2464\/revisions\/2466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}