文章基本信息

标题：The Effect of Police Response Time on Crime Detection
本地全文：下载
作者：Jordi Blanes i Vidal ; Tom Kirchmaier
期刊名称：CEP Discussion Paper
出版年度：2015
卷号：2015
语种：English
出版社：Centre for Economic Performance
摘要：Police agencies devote vast resources to minimising the time that it takes them to attend the scene of a crime. Despite this, the long-standing consensus is that police response time has no meaningful effect on the likelihood of catching offenders. We revisit this question using a uniquely rich dataset from the Greater Manchester Police. To identify causal effects, we exploit discontinuities in distance to the response station across locations next to each other, but on different sides of division boundaries. Contrary to previous evidence, we find large and strongly significant effects: in our preferred estimate, a 10% increase in response time leads to a 4.6 percentage points decrease in the likelihood of detection. A faster response time also decreases the number of days that it takes for the police to detect a crime, conditional on eventual detection. We find stronger effects for thefts than for violent offenses, although the effects are large for every type of crime. We identify the higher likelihood that a suspect will be named by a victim or witness as an important mechanism though which response time makes a difference.
关键词：Police crime;organisational performance