Little evidence that military policing reduces crime or improves human security

Robert A. Blair () and Michael Weintraub ()
Additional contact information
Robert A. Blair: Brown University
Michael Weintraub: Universidad de los Andes

Nature Human Behaviour, 2023, vol. 7, issue 6, 861-873

Abstract: Abstract Governments in low- and middle-income countries routinely deploy their armed forces for domestic policing operations. Advocates of these policies claim they reduce crime, while detractors argue they undermine human rights. Here we experimentally evaluate a military policing intervention in Cali, Colombia. The intervention involved recurring, intensive military patrols targeting crime hot spots, randomly assigned at the city block level. Using administrative crime and human rights data, surveys of more than 10,000 residents, and firsthand observations from civilian monitors, we find little to no credible evidence that military policing reduced crime or improved perceptions of safety during the intervention. If anything, we find that military policing probably exacerbated crime after the intervention was complete. We also find evidence of increased human rights abuses in our survey data (though not in the administrative data or in the firsthand observations of civilian monitors), largely committed by police officers rather than soldiers. We argue the benefits of military policing are probably small and not worth the costs.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01600-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nathum:v:7:y:2023:i:6:d:10.1038_s41562-023-01600-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01600-1

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Human Behaviour is currently edited by Stavroula Kousta

More articles in Nature Human Behaviour from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().