The effects of body-worn cameras on police efficiency: A study of local police agencies in the US

Erik Alda

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Do Body-Worn Cameras improve police efficiency? This study answers this question in the context of a sample of local police agencies in the US, where the adoption of BWCs by police agencies has increased significantly in recent years. To estimate the effects of BWCs on police efficiency, I exploited the differences in the adoption of BWCs between agencies that acquired them ("acquirers") and agencies that deployed them ("deployers"). Using a multiple stage approach, in the first stage I estimated the efficiency of local police agencies using a robust order-m model In the second stage, I estimated the effects of BWCs using a range of matching estimators and an instrumental variable model. The first stage results show that police agencies could improve their efficiency by 35 percent from 0.76 to 1. The second stage matching and IV estimates suggest that BWCs can help improve police efficiency between eight and 21 percent. The effects are larger for those agencies that fully deployed BWCs with their officers. Overall, this study’s results support the argument that BWCs can help improve police efficiency.

Keywords: Police; Performance; Efficiency; Data Envelopment Analysis; Matching Estimators; Instrumental Variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C26 D24 H11 H44 L23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-ure
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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/104169/1/MPRA_paper_104169.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:103887

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