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The Effect of the Police on Crime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

James Q. Wilson  and
Barbara Boland
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Abstract

The effect of police practices on the rate of robbery in 35 large American cities is estimated by a set of simultaneous equations. The measures of police resources (patrol units on the street) and police activity on the street (moving citations issued) are more precise than anything thus far available in studies of this kind and permit the use of identification restrictions that allow stronger inferences about the causal effect of arrests on crime rates than has heretofore been possible. Police resources and police activity independently affect the robbery rate after controlling for various socioeconomic factors. The political arrangements that lead to the use of aggressive patrol strategies are discussed and their effect estimated. The implications for, and limitations upon, policy are also discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 12 , Issue 3: Special Issue on Criminal Justice , Spring 1978 , pp. 367 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 The Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

The authors wish to thank Ralph Gants and Olsen Lee for their able assistance in gathering and processing data and Jan Chaiken, Robert Crain, Franklin Fisher, Robert Gillespie, David F. Greenberg, Zvi Griliches, Richard Muth, and William Scanlon for their comments on an earlier version. The research for this paper was supported by a grant to The Urban Institute from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). Neither the Institute nor LEAA is responsible for the views presented here.

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