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Book Title: Research Handbook on the Economics of Criminal Law
Editor(s): Harel, Alon; Hylton, N. Keith
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN (hard cover): 9781848443747
Section: Chapter 10
Section Title: Mobile Phones and Crime Deterrence: An Underappreciated Link
Author(s): Klick, Jonathan; MacDonald, John; Stratmann, Thomas
Number of pages: 14
Extract:
10 Mobile phones and crime deterrence: an
underappreciated link
Jonathan Klick, John MacDonald, and
Thomas Stratmann
1. INTRODUCTION
The crime decline observed in the 1990s is remarkable. Between 1991 and 2001, crime
rates dropped by about a one-third across all crime categories. Perhaps more notable,
this decline was almost completely unforeseen. Given the sheer magnitude of this unpre-
dicted decline, it is not surprising that finding explanations for it is a central focus of
modern empirical crime scholarship.
Explanations range from the intuitive more cops equal less crime (e.g., Evans and
Owens 2007) as does the greater use of prison (Spelman 2006), to the provocative
legalized abortion culls the population of potential criminals (Donohue and Levitt 2001),
and everything in between. In an influential review of the topic, Levitt (2004) suggests
that four factors, abortion legalization, increases in police forces, changes in the market
for crack cocaine, and rising prison populations, account for virtually all the crime
decline. Of these factors, Levitt and other scholars suggest prisons provide the largest
contribution to the crime drop (Blumstein and Wallman 2000).
However, Levitt notes a puzzle. Prison populations increased during the period
19731991. Based on the calculations he uses to analyse the 19912001 period, he would
have predicted large crime rate declines in the earlier period too when, in fact, reported
crime increased significantly in the 1970s and 1980s according to the FBI's Uniform
Crime Report (UCR) data. To some extent, concerns about reported property crime
are ...
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URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ELECD/2012/570.html