When does crime respond to punishment?: Evidence from drug-free school zones

Robert Gonzalez, Ranae Jabri and Sarah Komisarow

Journal of Urban Economics, 2025, vol. 147, issue C

Abstract: Economic theory suggests that crime should respond to punishment severity. However, empirical evidence on this link is ambiguous. We propose one explanation for this discrepancy: Punishments deter crime but only when the probability of detection is moderate. Using increases in punishment severity in drug-free school zones along with changes in the probability of detection resulting from a community crime-monitoring program, we demonstrate that drug-related crime drops in blocks just within the drug-free school zones, where punishments are more severe, but only if the monitoring intensity – and hence the probability of detection – is at intermediate levels.

Keywords: Crime; Deterrence; Punishment; Fines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H40 K40 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119025000282
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:juecon:v:147:y:2025:i:c:s0094119025000282

DOI: 10.1016/j.jue.2025.103763

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Urban Economics is currently edited by S.S. Rosenthal and W.C. Strange

More articles in Journal of Urban Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().