Data and Code for: The Economics of Policing and Public Safety

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Project Citation:

Owens, Emily, and Ba, Bocar. Data and Code for: The Economics of Policing and Public Safety. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2021. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-11-03. https://doi.org/10.3886/E148482V1

Project Description

Summary: The efficiency of any police action depends on the relative magnitude of its crime reducing benefits and legitimacy costs. Policing strategies that are socially efficient at the city level may be harmful at the local level, because the distribution of direct costs and benefits of police actions that reduce victimization is not the same as the distribution of indirect benefits of feeling safe. In the United States, the local misallocation of police resources is disproportionately borne by Black and Hispanic people. Despite the complexity of this particular problem, we point out that the incentives facing both police departments and police officers tend to be structured as if the goals of policing were simple - to reduce crime by as much as possible. Data collection on the crime reducing benefits of policing, and not the legitimacy costs, produce further incentives to provide more engagement than may be efficient in any specific encounter, at both the officer and departmental level. There is currently little evidence as to what screening, training, or monitoring strategies are most effective at encouraging individual officers to balance the crime reducing benefits and legitimacy costs of their actions.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Policing

JEL Classification:
H76 State and Local Government: Other Expenditure Categories
K14 Criminal Law

Geographic Coverage: USA

Time Period(s): 1993 – 2016

Collection Date(s): 2020 – 2021 (Dates refer to when authors accessed existing data sets)

Data Type(s): administrative records data; survey data

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Published Versions

V1 [2021-11-03]

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