IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpb/discus/47.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Estimating police effectiveness with individual victimisation data

Author

Listed:
  • Ben Vollaard
  • Pierre Koning

Abstract

In this paper, we present evidence on the effect of greater numbers of police personnel on victimisation of crime and experience of nuisance. We make use of individual data from a Dutch victimisation survey unique in its size, duration and scope. In this paper, we present evidence on the effect of greater numbers of police personnel on victimisation of crime and experience of nuisance. We make use of individual data from a Dutch victimisation survey unique in its size, duration and scope. By using individual victimisation data we provide evidence on the effects of police on nuisance rather than 'hard crime' only, we circumvent measurement error common to police statistics, and we are able to control for both individual and municipality characteristics. We find significantly negative effects of higher police levels on property crime, violent crime and nuisance. The estimated elasticities are in line with the literature based on police statistics. Urban police forces are more effective than rural police forces for most types of crime and nuisance. Additionally, we find experience of nuisance mostly to be a characteristic of the municipality in which someone lives, with little variation across individuals in a municipality, whereas victimisation of violent crime varies across individuals rather than municipalities. For property crime, individual and municipality characteristics are about equally important. Finally, we provide evidence that greater police protection allows people to move around more freely, which is an additional benefit of higher police levels not reflected in a decline in victimisation rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Ben Vollaard & Pierre Koning, 2005. "Estimating police effectiveness with individual victimisation data," CPB Discussion Paper 47, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpb:discus:47
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cpb.nl/sites/default/files/publicaties/download/estimating-police-effectiveness-individual-victimisation-data.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Manski, C.F., 1990. "The Selection Problem," Working papers 90-12, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    2. Klick, Jonathan & Tabarrok, Alexander, 2005. "Using Terror Alert Levels to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 48(1), pages 267-279, April.
    3. Tauchen, Helen & Witte, Ann Dryden & Griesinger, Harriet, 1994. "Criminal Deterrence: Revisiting the Issue with a Birth Cohort," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(3), pages 399-412, August.
    4. Philipson, Tomas J & Posner, Richard A, 1996. "The Economic Epidemiology of Crime," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(2), pages 405-433, October.
    5. H. Naci Mocan & Hope Corman, 2000. "A Time-Series Analysis of Crime, Deterrence, and Drug Abuse in New York City," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 584-604, June.
    6. Ann Dryden Witte & Robert Witt, 2001. "What We Spend and What We Get: Public and Private Provision of Crime Prevention," NBER Working Papers 8204, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Charles F. Manski, 1993. "Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(3), pages 531-542.
    8. Levitt, Steven D, 1997. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 270-290, June.
    9. Ann Dryden Witte & Robert Witt, 2001. "What we spend and what we get: Public and private provision of crime prevention and criminal justice," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 22(1), pages 1-40, March.
    10. 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.
    11. Karin Wittebrood & Marianne Junger, 2002. "Trends in violent crime: a comparison between police statistics and victimization surveys," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 59(2), pages 153-173, August.
    12. Rafael Di Tella & Ernesto Schargrodsky, 2004. "Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces After a Terrorist Attack," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 115-133, March.
    13. Mundlak, Yair, 1978. "On the Pooling of Time Series and Cross Section Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 69-85, January.
    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. Ben Vollaard, 2006. "Evaluating the push for tougher, more targeted policing in the Netherlands; evidence from a citizen survey," CPB Document 119.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    2. Ben Vollaard, 2006. "Evaluating the push for tougher, more targeted policing in the Netherlands; evidence from a citizen survey," CPB Document 119, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

    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. Vollaard, Ben & Koning, Pierre, 2009. "The effect of police on crime, disorder and victim precaution. Evidence from a Dutch victimization survey," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 336-348, December.
    2. Ben Vollaard, 2005. "Police numbers up, crime rates down. The effect of police on crime in the Netherlands, 1996-2003," Law and Economics 0501006, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Steven N. Durlauf & Daniel S. Nagin, 2010. "The Deterrent Effect of Imprisonment," NBER Chapters, in: Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs, pages 43-94, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Mirko Draca & Stephen Machin & Robert Witt, 2011. "Panic on the Streets of London: Police, Crime, and the July 2005 Terror Attacks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 2157-2181, August.
    5. Poutvaara, Panu & Priks, Mikael, 2009. "The effect of police intelligence on group violence: Evidence from reassignments in Sweden," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(3-4), pages 403-411, April.
    6. Mirko Draca & Stephen Machin & Robert Witt, 2010. "Crime Displacement and Police Interventions: Evidence from London's "Operation Theseus"," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Crime: Lessons For and From Latin America, pages 359-374, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Panu Poutvaara & Mikael Priks, 2006. "Hooliganism in the Shadow of the 9/11 Terrorist Attack and the Tsunami: Do Police Reduce Group Violence?," CESifo Working Paper Series 1882, CESifo.
    8. Jonathan Klick & Alexander Tabarrok, 2010. "Police, Prisons, and Punishment: The Empirical Evidence on Crime Deterrence," Chapters, in: Bruce L. Benson & Paul R. Zimmerman (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Crime, chapter 6, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Amanda Ross & Anne Walker, 2014. "Low Priority Laws and the Allocation of Police Resources," Working Papers 14-06, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
    10. Evans, William N. & Owens, Emily G., 2007. "COPS and crime," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1-2), pages 181-201, February.
    11. Amanda Ross & Anne Walker, 2017. "The Impact Of Low-Priority Laws On Criminal Activity: Evidence From California," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(2), pages 239-252, April.
    12. Montolio, Daniel & Planells-Struse, Simón, 2015. "When police patrols matter. The effect of police proximity on citizens’ crime risk perception," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 73-93.
    13. Philip A. Curry & Anindya Sen & George Orlov, 2016. "Crime, apprehension and clearance rates: Panel data evidence from Canadian provinces," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(2), pages 481-514, May.
    14. Paolo Buonanno & Giovanni Mastrobuoni, 2012. "Police and Crime: Evidence from Dictated Delays in Centralized Police Hiring," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 244, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    15. Christophe Bellégo & Joeffrey Drouard, 2019. "Does It Pay to Fight Crime? Evidence From the Pacification of Slums in Rio de Janeiro," Working Papers 2019-08, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    16. Jackson, C. Kirabo & Owens, Emily Greene, 2011. "One for the road: Public transportation, alcohol consumption, and intoxicated driving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 106-121.
    17. Cho, Sungwoo & Gonçalves, Felipe & Weisburst, Emily, 2021. "Do Police Make Too Many Arrests? The Effect of Enforcement Pullbacks on Crime," IZA Discussion Papers 14907, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Montolio, Daniel & Planells-Struse, Simón, 2015. "When police patrols matter. The effect of police proximity on citizens’ crime risk perception," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 73-93.
    19. Guha, Brishti, 2013. "Guns and crime revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 1-10.
    20. LeRoy, William, 2024. "Understanding policing in the aftermath of gun violence: Examining investigatory stops and crime in Chicago," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cpb:discus:47. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cpbgvnl.html .

    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.