Crime and police resources: the street crime initiative

Machin, Stephen and Marie, Olivier (2005) Crime and police resources: the street crime initiative. CEPDP (680). London School of Economics and Political Science. Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK. ISBN 0753018209

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Abstract

In this paper we look at links between police resources and crime in a different way to the existing economics of crime work. To do so we focus on a policy intervention - the Street Crime Initiative - that was introduced in England and Wales in 2002. This allocated additional resources to some police force areas to combat street crime, whereas other forces did not receive any additional funding. Estimates derived from several empirical strategies show that robberies did fall significantly in SCI police forces relative to non-SCI forces after the initiative was introduced. Moreover, the policy seems to have been a cost effective one. There is some heterogeneity in this positive net social benefit across different SCI police forces, suggesting that some police forces may have made better use of the extra resources than others. Overall, we reach the conclusion that increased police resources do in fact lead to lower crime, at least in the context of the SCI programme we study.

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL:	http://cep.lse.ac.uk
Additional Information:	© 2005 the authors
Divisions:	Centre for Economic Performance
Subjects:	J Political Science > JA Political science (General) K Law > K Law (General)
JEL classification:	H - Public Economics > H0 - General > H00 - General H - Public Economics > H5 - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies K - Law and Economics > K4 - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior > K42 - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
Date Deposited:	24 Jul 2008 09:31
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 23:00
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/19902

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