The Impact of the First Professional Police Forces on Crime

State Capacity and Economic Development: A Network Approach

Anna Bindler and Randi Hjalmarsson

Journal of the European Economic Association, 2021, vol. 19, issue 6, 3063-3103

Abstract: This paper evaluates the effect on crime of creating a fundamental modern-day institution: centralized professional police forces tasked with preventing crime. We study the 1829 formation of the London Metropolitan Police—the first professional force worldwide. Using newly digitized and geocoded crime and police data together with difference-in-differences and pre–post designs, we find evidence of a significant reduction in violent crimes (despite the possibility of offsetting increases in clearance and reporting rates). In contrast, a reduction in property crime is not visible.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeea/jvab011 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of the First Professional Police Forces on Crime (2021)
Working Paper: The Impact of the First Professional Police Forces on Crime (2019)
Working Paper: The Impact of the First Professional Police Forces on Crime (2019)
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:oup:jeurec:v:19:y:2021:i:6:p:3063-3103.

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the European Economic Association is currently edited by Romain Wacziarg

More articles in Journal of the European Economic Association from European Economic Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().