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Contribution to Book
Do Police Reduce Crime? A Reexamination of a Natural Experiment
Empirical Legal Studies of Judicial Systems (2013)
  • John J. Donohue, Stanford Law School
Abstract

We reexamine a natural experiment first studied by Di Tella and Schargrodsky (2004, “DS”). In response to a 1994 terrorist attack against a Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, the government implemented 24-hour police surveillance on city blocks with Jewish institutions. Using a control group of blocks without Jewish institutions, DS applied difference-in-differences, finding that increased policing substantially reduced car theft. We explain how the reallocation of police resources from unprotected to protected blocks, shifts in criminal activity to avoid 24-hour police patrols, and a parking prohibition on protected blocks undermine the original design. The intervention may have displaced, rather than deterred, crime, invalidating the original control group. To investigate this possibility, we reanalyze the data with two modifications. First, we disaggregate the original control group into near and far blocks, with displacement much more likely to affect near blocks. Second, to reduce model sensitivity, we match exactly on all covariates, including neighborhood and the full pretreatment car theft time series. Consistent with displacement, we find that crime increases on near blocks relative to protected blocks, but that crime rates on protected and far blocks are indistinguishable.

Disciplines
Publication Date
2013
Editor
Yun-Chien Chang
Citation Information
John J. Donohue. "Do Police Reduce Crime? A Reexamination of a Natural Experiment" Empirical Legal Studies of Judicial Systems (2013)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/john_donohue/103/