Crime Rates and Police Efficiency

Gregory DeAngelo, Donald Vitaliano and Hannes Lang
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Hannes Lang: Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), 110 Eighth Street, Troy, NY, USA. E-mails: deangg@rpi.edu; vitald@rpi.edu; langh@rpi.edu

Eastern Economic Journal, 2014, vol. 40, issue 4, 535-559

Abstract: This paper measures the relative efficiency of 50 municipal police departments in New York State using an output-oriented data envelopment analysis programming model and finds that 30 departments are efficient, while 20 could improve their efficiency. Adoption of best practice methods in the 20 laggard agencies could reduce violent crime by an average 173 percent and property crime by 64 percent. We find that four factors show statistically significant effects on violent and property crime “output:” the number of community policing officers, the number of employment screening techniques, the number of mobile computer devices deployed, and the number officers employed in special drug units.

Date: 2014
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