Harold L. Votey

Crime Control in California

Our model permits us to investigate the possible deterrent effects of the likelihood of conviction and the severity of sentence on the commission of felony crime, and also to evaluate the impact of increased law enforcement manpower on the conviction rate. We find that the likelihood of conviction and the severity of sentence significantly deter crime, a result consistent with our time series studies as well as a cross-section study by Phillips using state data, a cross-section study by Sjoquist using city data and a cross-section study by Ehrlich using state data.1 In contrast to the last

Police Effectiveness and the Production Function for Law Enforcement

INTRODUCTION. The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a theoretical framework for the analysis of production relationships in the law enforcement service industry. We (1) provide the theoretical rationale for utilizing a production-function approach to relate the output of a law enforcement agency, in its treatment of major felonies, to the level of offenses for those felonies, and to the primary inputs (resources) utilized in law enforcement,1 and (2) attempt to measure the effectiveness of police activity-a problem neglected by economists to date.2 The appropriate technique for a crime-by-crime analysis is not immediately obvious. There is an accepted measure of output (the number of offenses cleared by arrest for each crime) but an almost complete lack of cost accounting data relating the inputs into law enforcement to individual categories of crime. That limitation can be overcome by using optimality conditions to derive the fraction of each input allocated to each crime.3 If law enforcement

FORECASTING HIGHWAY CASUALTIES: THE BRITISH ROAD SAFETY ACT AND A SENSE OF DEJA VU

This paper reexamines the effect of the introduction of the British Road Safety Act of 1967. We construct a dynamic model relating monthly road casualties to road traffic, rainfall, and alcohol consumption, standardizing for the seasonality in the data. An intervention variable captures the effect of the Road Safety Act. The findings confirm Rosss earlier conclusion that the Road Safety Act significantly reduces casualties. However, we find that the Road Safety Act only accounts for 2.7 percent of the variance in road casualties, while miles-driven and rainfall account for 48.8 percent, and alcohol consumption explains 4.2 percent. Our model forecasts accurately for 24 months beyond December, 1972, the last month used for estimation.

The deterioration of deterrence effects of driving legislation: Have we been giving wrong signals to policymakers?

This paper suggests that the apparently observed initial success of legislation to control drunken driving accidents by law enforcement and sanctions, followed by a return of accident levels to initial trends may be an artifact of failure to properly model the accident process. The point is illustrated by simulating a model of accidents in which drunken driving is controllable with a change in laws. It shows that this control effect can easily be swamped by other plausible accident inducing forces. Finally, it is argued that the cost of failing to maintain efforts to control drunken driving may be greater than the social costs of maintaining high enforcement levels and stiff penalties.

The optimum population and growth: A new look: A modification to include a preference for children in the welfare function

Abstract The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum. The difficulty of defining the optimum is enormous; so far as I know, no one has seriously tackled this problem. Reaching an acceptable and stable solution will surely require more than one generation of hard analytical work—and much persuasion. 1

Control of drunken driving accidents in Norway: An econometric evaluation of behavior under uncertainty

This article makes use of a very simple choice-theoretic model and econometric analysis to evaluate the control of motoring accidents in Norway. The model attempts to take account of the impact of driving levels, traffic density, and road quality as well as alcohol consumption, the probability of convictions, and sanctions on the generation of accidents. Five alternative logit formulations, estimated within a simultaneous systems framework, provide insights on the impact of law enforcement on the levels of fatal and serious accidents. Results of this pooled cross-section-time-series analysis compare favorably with earlier time-series estimates of the strength of control effects.

Employment, Age, Race, and Crime: A Labor Theoretic Investigation

The fundamental objective of this paper has been to reinvestigate the relationship between employment and crime, while taking account of deterrence, age and race effects. The data, a sample of Brooklyn arrestees, was collected by the Vera Institute of Justice simply to explore, with individual data, the relationship between employment and crime. In this research, a labor theoretic formulation is used incorporating a model that views the problem as one of rational choice between legitimate work and participation in crime. Factors affecting the diminution of crime participation with age are investigated. Changes at age 18 in economic opportunities and in deterrence effects from moving from juvenile to adult status are found to have a significant impact on crime participation. The results are important because they tend to confirm with official crime report data, results found in earlier studies using self-report data, i.e., (1) when the process is appropriately modeled, previous contacts with police are found to cause some experimenters with crime to become desisters, (2) prior work experience and economic opportunities tend to reinforce this tendency to desist, (3) even though blacks are found to have a greater prevalence of involvement in crime, when the data are standardized for all of the aforementioned factors and educational attainment, there is no significant difference between blacks and whites in their tendency to recidivate.The fundamental objective of this paper has been to reinvestigate the relationship between employment and crime, while taking account of deterrence, age and race effects. The data, a sample of Brooklyn arrestees, was collected by the Vera Institute of Justice simply to explore, with individual data, the relationship between employment and crime. In this research, a labor theoretic formulation is used incorporating a model that views the problem as one of rational choice between legitimate work and participation in crime. Factors affecting the diminution of crime participation with age are investigated. Changes at age 18 in economic opportunities and in deterrence effects from moving from juvenile to adult status are found to have a significant impact on crime participation. The results are important because they tend to confirm with official crime report data, results found in earlier studies using self-report data, i.e., (1) when the process is appropriately modeled, previous contacts with police are found to cause some experimenters with crime to become desisters, (2) prior work experience and economic opportunities tend to reinforce this tendency to desist, (3) even though blacks are found to have a greater prevalence of involvement in crime, when the data are standardized for all of the aforementioned factors and educational attainment, there is no significant difference between blacks and whites in their tendency to recidivate.

Social goals and appropriate policy for corrections: An economic appraisal

This paper presents a logical approach to the problem of devising socially acceptable policy for the operation of a corrections system. As an alternative to considering separately the frequently mentioned, but conflicting goals of providing rehabilitation, retribution, detention of dangerous criminals, and general and specific deterrence of criminal behavior, the authors suggest that the goal be couched in terms of minimizing the social cost of crime. By developing a model which illustrates how the corrections process relates to the various facets of the criminal justice system, and by isolating the functional relationships which must be taken into account, the authors are able to show there is an optimal level of rehabilitation, detention, and deterrence associated with a socially optimal level of criminal activity and criminal justice control activity. Although much remains to be learned before such a model can be effectively implemented, considerable research has already pointed the way for learning how to more effectively balance the alternatives for policy. An enumeration of the policy implications of the model identifies targets for further research.

Detention of Heroin Addicts, Job Opportunities, and Deterrence

The project studied concentrates on a policy of detention of addicts who have been proven to be under the influence of narcotic drugs. It operates under provisions of the California Health and Safety Code and, in contrast to national policy, it concentrates control on the demand rather than the supply side of the clandestine market for hard drugs. The program was expected to reduce social costs borne by victims of property crime. The model forming the basis for the analysis extends a labor-market model of crime generation, modified to take account of the free addict population and incorporated in a simultaneous framework to take account of deterrent effects of law enforcement on crime generation. The principal finding is that detention for recognized drug addicts has a significant impact on property crime. While the same can be said of a policy creating additional job opportunities or one raising the probability of arrest for property crime

Taking account of system interactions in modelling road accidents.

This paper argues that modelling of accidents and injuries not based on the broadest possible conceptualization of the accident generation process is likely to suffer from unintended biases. Further, careful consideration must be given to the objectives for which the modelling is designed. The analysis recognizes that the form modelling can take is constrained by data availability. Alternative modelling techniques are discussed along with the advantages and weaknesses of each. Finally, it is recommended that, when possible, a battery of techniques be used, to guarantee needed information is obtained while assuring the results are not simply a biased product of the technique used.