IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlawec/y2005v48i1p281-306.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Estimating the Effect of America's Most Wanted: A Duration Analysis of Wanted Fugitives

Author

Listed:
  • Miles, Thomas J

Abstract

Fugitives fleeing criminal prosecution and punishment are a major obstacle in the effort to fight crime, and conventional wisdom holds that publicity, such as the television program America's Most Wanted, successfully locates wanted fugitives. This paper estimates a hazard model of fugitive flight using a sample of recently pursued fugitives and tests whether a fugitive's appearance on the television program America's Most Wanted hastens apprehension. The estimates show that broadcasting a fugitive's profile on America's Most Wanted substantially raises the apprehension hazard by a factor of seven and shortens the expected fugitive spell by roughly a fourth. The estimates also suggest that the television program provides a net social benefit. A fugitive's demographic and offense characteristics also correlate with the apprehension hazard.

Suggested Citation

  • Miles, Thomas J, 2005. "Estimating the Effect of America's Most Wanted: A Duration Analysis of Wanted Fugitives," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(1), pages 281-306, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:y:2005:v:48:i:1:p:281-306
    DOI: 10.1086/428718
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/428718
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/428718?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sueyoshi, Glenn T., 1992. "Semiparametric proportional hazards estimation of competing risks models with time-varying covariates," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1-2), pages 25-58.
    2. Rosen, Sherwin, 2007. "Studies in Labor Markets," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226726304, April.
    3. Heckman, James & Singer, Burton, 1984. "A Method for Minimizing the Impact of Distributional Assumptions in Econometric Models for Duration Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(2), pages 271-320, March.
    4. Steven D. Levitt, 2002. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effects of Police on Crime: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1244-1250, September.
    5. Han, Aaron & Hausman, Jerry A, 1990. "Flexible Parametric Estimation of Duration and Competing Risk Models," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 5(1), pages 1-28, January-M.
    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. Catherine rodr�guez & fabio sánchez, 2012. "Armed Conflict Exposure, Human Capital Investments, And Child Labor: Evidence From Colombia," Defence and Peace Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(2), pages 161-184, April.
    2. Howard Bodenhorn & Carolyn Moehling & Gregory N. Price, 2012. "Short Criminals: Stature and Crime in Early America," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(2), pages 393-419.
    3. Thomas J. Miles, 2008. "An Empirical Analysis of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(2), pages 275-308, June.
    4. Bierie, David M., 2014. "Fugitives in the United States," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 327-337.

    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. Bhat, Chandra R., 1996. "A hazard-based duration model of shopping activity with nonparametric baseline specification and nonparametric control for unobserved heterogeneity," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 189-207, June.
    2. George Neumann, 1996. "Search Models and Duration Data," Econometrics 9602008, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 07 Mar 1996.
    3. Lorenzo Cappellari & Richard Dorsett & Getinet Haile, 2007. "State dependence, duration dependence and unobserved heterogeneity in the employment transitions of the over-50s," DISCE - Quaderni dell'Istituto di Economia dell'Impresa e del Lavoro ieil0049, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    4. Bruce Fallick & Keunkwan Ryu, 2007. "The Recall and New Job Search of Laid-Off Workers: A Bivariate Proportional Hazard Model with Unobserved Heterogeneity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(2), pages 313-323, May.
    5. Bent Jesper Christensen & Malene Kallestrup‐Lamb, 2012. "The Impact Of Health Changes On Labor Supply: Evidence From Merged Data On Individual Objective Medical Diagnosis Codes And Early Retirement Behavior," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(S1), pages 56-100, June.
    6. Christian N. Brinch, 2008. "Non-parametric Identification of the Mixed Hazards Model with Interval-Censored Durations," Discussion Papers 539, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    7. Elena Casquel & Antoni Cunyat, "undated". "The Welfare Cost of Business Cycles in an Economy with Nonclearing Markets," Working Papers 2005-19, FEDEA.
    8. Damien Échevin & Bernard Fortin, 2011. "Physician Payment Mechanisms, Hospital Length of Stay and Risk of Readmission: a Natural Experiment," CIRANO Working Papers 2011s-44, CIRANO.
    9. Ando, Amy, 1998. "Delay on the Path to the Endangered Species List: Do Costs and Benefits Matter," RFF Working Paper Series dp-97-43-rev, Resources for the Future.
    10. Agarwal, Sumit & Ambrose, Brent W. & Chomsisengphet, Souphala & Liu, Chunlin, 2006. "An empirical analysis of home equity loan and line performance," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 444-469, October.
    11. John Haltiwanger & Russell Cooper & Laura Power, 1999. "Machine Replacement and the Business Cycle: Lumps and Bumps," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 921-946, September.
    12. Arellano, Manuel & Carrasco, Raquel, 2003. "Binary choice panel data models with predetermined variables," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 115(1), pages 125-157, July.
    13. Mark Yuying An, 2004. "Likelihood-Based Estimation of a Proportional-Hazard, Competing- Risk Model with Grouped Duration Data," Urban/Regional 0407013, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Raul Razo-Garcia, 2011. "The Duration of Intermediate Exchange Rate Regimes and Capital Controls," Carleton Economic Papers 11-01, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 17 Oct 2011.
    15. Michael Baker & Samuel A. Rea, 1998. "Employment Spells And Unemployment Insurance Eligibility Requirements," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(1), pages 80-94, February.
    16. Martin Browning & Jesus M. Carro, 2013. "The Identification of a Mixture of First-Order Binary Markov Chains," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 75(3), pages 455-459, June.
    17. Nick Carroll, 2006. "Explaining Unemployment Duration in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 82(258), pages 298-314, September.
    18. Mingliang Li, 2006. "High school completion and future youth unemployment: new evidence from High School and Beyond," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(1), pages 23-53, January.
    19. Échevin, Damien & Fortin, Bernard, 2014. "Physician payment mechanisms, hospital length of stay and risk of readmission: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 112-124.
    20. Coelli, Michael B. & Green, David A. & Warburton, William P., 2007. "Breaking the cycle? The effect of education on welfare receipt among children of welfare recipients," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(7-8), pages 1369-1398, August.

    More about this item

    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:ucp:jlawec:y:2005:v:48:i:1:p:281-306. 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE .

    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.