Nuisance Ordinances and Domestic Violence

Sarah Kroeger () and Giulia La Mattina ()
Additional contact information
Sarah Kroeger: U.S. Department of the Treasury
Giulia La Mattina: University of South Florida

No 17565, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Criminal activity nuisance ordinances penalize tenants for calling emergency services in relation to certain illegal events, including domestic violence. There is a widespread concern that these policies will exert a chilling effect on the reporting of domestic violence and potentially increase the incidence and severity of domestic assaults. We exploit the sequential implementation of criminal activity nuisance ordinances by municipalities in Ohio, and estimate the direct impact of these ordinances on intimate partner homicides using a reduced form framework. We rule out an increase in intimate partner homicides following the enactment of a nuisance ordinance; in fact we estimate a negative impact. The effect is driven by a reduction in partner homicides in cities with a higher proportion of renter-occupied homes prior to the implementation of the ordinances. We do not find any evidence that the effect can be attributed to selective migration out of cities that enacted nuisance ordinances or a change in police officer reporting practices.

Keywords: domestic violence; housing policy; intimate partner homicide; nuisance ordinance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J18 K42 R28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2024-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17565.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp17565

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().