But it is misleading simply to compare increases in African American officers with crime rates. When testing standards are lowered, the increase in the percentage of African American officers is associated with more crime, not the cause of it. The problem is not the presence of more African American officers per se, but rather the quality of all officers in departments that implement these methods. Most of the increased crime cannot even be attributed to more unqualified African American officers, but rather to the hiring of unqualified officers of all races. This is because the replacement of intelligence exams with psychological tests makes it more difficult to separate out high and low-quality white, Asian, and other recruits just as it does with African American ones.
The reduction in strength standards for female recruits, in contrast, has had only a small detrimental effect.52 This is likely because these standards are typically lowered through norming; in other words, the standards are lowered for women but not for men. Strength standards for men can even be increased when the hiring of more women creates more competition among male recruits for the declining number of jobs available to them.
However, my study also found that lowered strength standards made female officers more vulnerable to assault and less able to control resisting suspects by themselves. This puts pressure on police departments to shift away from one-officer to two-officer patrol units as well as to reduce the number of walking and bicycle patrols.
To compensate for physical weakness, women may resort to other means of controlling criminals, in particular by using guns.53 Guns are a “great equalizer,” but they don’t completely offset strength differences. Being less able to rely on physical strength to defend themselves from an attack, female officers have less time to decide whether to shoot a threatening suspect. This explains the sharp increase in accidental police shootings that typically follow the lowering of strength standards and the hiring of more female officers.54
Ironically, affirmative action consent decrees cause the biggest spikes in crime in poor African American neighborhoods—places already plagued by terrible crime. Lowering the effectiveness of the police force in such communities, as affirmative action policies do, clearly harms these struggling areas. If we want a more diverse police force, we should seek better ways of achieving it. Simply abandoning intelligence testing is not a beneficial approach.
What Decreased Crime? Part I
The Death Penalty
If abortion and affirmative action policies actually increased crime, then what caused the huge fall in crime in the 1990s? Although it would be nice and neat if we could identify a single element as the solution, the truth is that numerous factors combined to drive down crime. One of the most important of these was the Supreme Court’s 1976 decision to rescind the ban on the death penalty. Three-quarters of the states soon re-imposed the death penalty, though it wasn’t until the early 1990s that significant numbers of executions began occurring again.
Capital punishment clearly increases the risk to criminals of engaging in various crimes, especially murder. Does this increased risk affect criminals’ behavior? Before trying to answer this question, let’s first consider how another group that faces similar dangers reacts to the risk of death.
Academics classify being a police officer as an “extremely dangerous” job.55 In 2005, fifty-five police officers were murdered on the job, while another sixty-seven were accidentally killed.56 With nearly 700,000 full-time, sworn law enforcement officers in the United States, the murder rate of police officers comes to one in 12,500,57 a ratio that jumps to one in 5,600 when we include accidental deaths.
Although the risks of policing cannot be eliminated, police officers undertake a variety of measures to reduce the dangers: they wear bullet-proof vests, develop special procedures for approaching stopped cars, and in some situations officers wait for backup even when this increases the probability that a suspect will escape.
Officers undertake all these measures as a natural human reaction to the risk of death—the riskier an activity, the more a person will usually avoid it or take steps to make the activity safer. This rule applies to violent criminals just like anyone else. And the risk that a violent criminal faces from execution is much greater than the risk of a police officer being killed. In 2005, there were almost 16,700 murders in the United States and sixty executions.58 That translates to one execution for every 278 murders. In other words, a murderer is twenty times more likely to be executed than a police officer is to be deliberately or accidentally killed on duty.59
Those who argue that the death penalty has no effect on violent crime assume that the risk of execution in no way deters criminals from committing capital crimes. “It is hard to believe that fear of execution would be a driving force in a rational criminal’s calculus in modern America,” writes Steven Levitt.60 While criminals, just like police officers, are naturally less adverse to danger than, say, school teachers or accountants, the notion that it is irrational for them to take into account such an enormous additional risk runs contrary to human nature.61
There is widespread public debate over the effectiveness of the death penalty. Sadly, this has included some misleading reporting in the popular press. Take a widely publicized New York Times study that compared murder rates in 1998 in states with and without the death penalty.62 The Times concluded that capital punishment was ineffective in reducing crime, noting that “10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average . . . while half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average.”
This simple comparison really doesn’t prove anything. The twelve states without the death penalty have long enjoyed relatively low murder rates due to factors unrelated to capital punishment.63 When the death penalty was suspended nationwide from 1968 to 1976, the murder rate in these twelve states was still lower than in most other states. What is much more important is that the states that reinstituted the death penalty had about a 38 percent larger drop in murder rates by 1998.64
There were no executions in the United States between 1968 and 1976, a time when murder rates skyrocketed.65 Various theories were put forward in the 1970s to explain the jump in violent crime. Some claimed that the Supreme Court’s Miranda decision—mandating that suspects be read their rights during arrest—reduced criminal confessions and otherwise hindered convictions. Others blamed softer criminal penalties or lower arrest rates.66 Back in the 1970s these studies were generally inconclusive, however, due to the lack of data available at the time.67
Economists began to study the death penalty intently after its re-imposition in 1976. Isaac Ehrlich, then a young assistant professor at the University of Chicago, conducted path-breaking research showing that each execution deterred as many as twenty to twenty-four murders. 68 His findings, however, were anathema in liberal academia. His conclusions were roundly condemned, and Ehrlich was denied tenure at the University of Chicago. He even became too controversial to find work at most universities. However, his contentious findings sparked a good deal of new research into the effectiveness of capital punishment, including a special panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences. The panel came to the curious conclusion that greater penalties generally fail to deter criminals.69
Murder Rates v. Execution Rates in the United States from 1950 to 2005
Although many states immediately re-approved the death penalty after the Supreme Court lifted the ban in 1976, executions were relatively rare until the 1990s, when execution rates spiked dramatically. This elicited a flood of new research on capital punishment. Moreover, the new studies drew upon much more extensive data than had previously been available, allowing researchers to study crime rates over many years and across every state.
This research was conducted as violent crime rates were plummeting while executions were rising sharply. Between 1991 and 2000, there were 9,114 fewer murders per year, while the number of executions per year rose by seventy-one. The fresh studi
es resurrected Ehrlich’s earlier conclusions that the death penalty greatly deters murder. The vast majority of recent scholarly research confirms this deterrent effect.70 Generally, the studies found that each execution saved the lives of roughly fifteen to eighteen potential murder victims.71 Overall, the rise in executions during the 1990s accounts for about 12 to 14 percent of the overall drop in murders.
Research by Economists since the Mid-1990s on the Death Penalty
Despite the generally beneficial effect of capital punishment on crime, there are exceptions. One particular kind of crime where the death penalty shows no significant deterrent effect is multiple victim public shootings. This was the conclusion of a study I performed with Bill Landes at the University of Chicago.72 This exception stems from the unique circumstances of these kinds of crimes: the vast majority of these killers either commit suicide or are killed at the scene of the crime. The threat of legal punishment, including the death penalty, doesn’t really affect their actions since so many of these criminals expect to die in the course of their crime.
The death penalty has a beneficial effect even beyond deterring murders. Because capital punishment can be imposed if a victim dies in the commission of a rape, robbery, or aggravated assault, statistics show the death penalty also acts as a deterrent to these crimes as well.73 This, however, doesn’t mean that the death penalty should be applied directly to these crimes. There is such a thing as “too much” deterrence. For example, utilizing the death penalty too broadly can create some perverse incentives. Suppose the death penalty is used against robbers and rapists. These criminals would then become more determined to kill their victims and any potential witnesses since they would already be facing the death penalty. There would likely be fewer robberies and rapes, but those crimes would probably result in much higher numbers of dead victims.74
Polls consistently show that the vast majority of Americans support the death penalty. A 2006 ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 65 percent of Americans favor the death penalty for convicted murderers, with 32 percent opposed.75 There is even majority support for the death penalty in such unlikely places as Brazil, Eastern Europe, Japan, and South Africa.76 A plurality in Britain also supports it.77 This should not be too surprising; as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia noted, the death penalty was abolished in many countries by judicial fiat, despite widespread support for it among the general populations.78
A lot of people grasp intuitively an idea that economists only now are building a consensus toward: that the death penalty helps deter violent crimes and saves lives.
What Decreased Crime? Part II
Law Enforcement
The nation’s prison population grew 2.6 percent last year, the largest increase since 1999, according to a study by the Justice Department. The jump came despite a small decline in serious crime in 2002. . . . Alfred Blumstein, a leading criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, said it was not illogical for the prison population to go up even when the crime rate goes down.... Professor Blumstein said...that it has become increasingly clear from statistical research that “there is no reason that the prison count and the crime rate have to be consistent.” The crime rate measures the amount of crime people are suffering from, he said, while the prison count is a measure of how severely society chooses to deal with crime, which varies from time to time [emphasis added].
—Fox Butterfield, New York Times79
Is it really surprising that the number of prisoners increased while crime rates fell?80 Apparently it is to those who disregard incentives, a group that includes many criminologists as well as writers for the New York Times. Although these observers somehow doubt that locking up more criminals can deter crime, a large number of studies indicate that the more certain the punishment, the fewer the crimes committed.81 Arrest rates of criminals are usually the single most important factor in reducing every type of crime. Sensational topics like the death penalty may get the most media attention, but it is everyday police work that really makes a neighborhood safer. Changes in the arrest rate account for around 16 to 18 percent of the drop in the murder rate.82 Conviction rates explain another 12 percent. Arrest and conviction rates have an even larger effect on other types of violent crime. And their effect on property crimes is still greater, often two or three times larger than for violent crime overall.
While boosting arrest rates indisputably increases deterrence, the evidence on longer prison sentences is less clear. The reason is simple: methodologically, it’s surprisingly difficult to measure how long criminals expect to be in prison. The actual time served is often much shorter than the official length of a criminal’s sentence. Furthermore, the time that is served varies widely, even for a single type of crime, and depends on such factors as a suspect’s criminal history and the severity of the offense. Unfortunately, this kind of data is not readily available to researchers.
Arrest and conviction rates and expected prison sentence lengths all deal with deterrence—the cost to the criminal of committing a crime. But some people commit crimes despite those threats. Obviously, locking up the most crime-prone individuals will further decrease crime by keeping habitual criminals off the streets. Indeed, putting more people in prison explains another 10 to 12 percent of the drop in crime rates.83
Simply being arrested or convicted, even without a prison sentence, carries its own substantial penalties. As we noted in Chapter Two, these reputational penalties are the worst penalties that many criminals face.
What Decreased Crime? Part III
Right-to-Carry Laws
Allowing citizens to defend themselves with guns may no longer be as controversial as the death penalty. There has been a remarkable change in attitude toward the benefits of concealed handguns over the last twenty years as thirty additional states have become right-to-carry states, bringing the total to forty by 2007. These states grant permits to people of a certain age (either eighteen or twenty-one) once they pass a criminal background check and, in some states, take a handgun training class. Of these states, Alaska, Vermont, and nearly all of Montana have no regulations at all. Eight additional states allow applicants to obtain concealed weapons permits if they can demonstrate a need for the weapon. Today, only Illinois and Wisconsin completely ban citizens from carrying concealed handguns.84
States have clearly found a societal benefit over the last few decades in expanding their citizens’ rights to carry concealed handguns. It is revealing that no state that has relaxed its rules for obtaining concealed handgun permits has reversed course and instituted new restrictions.
The impact of these permits on crimes is no trivial matter; conservatively, there are over 4 million concealed handgun permits in the United States.85 While relatively gun friendly states such as Pennsylvania and Florida have alone issued 1.1 million permits between them, even some places with strict gun regulations have a surprisingly large number of permit holders. This is certainly true for New York City (38,500) and Massachusetts (203,000).86
While concealed weapons allow people to protect themselves from criminals, there are obvious possible drawbacks to increasing the number of gun carriers. People can get hurt in accidents, or gun carriers may use their weapons irresponsibly. The main question is: do concealed handguns save more lives than they put at risk?
It is abundantly clear that legal gun owners themselves pose few risks.87 The type of person who is willing to go through the permitting process tends to be law-abiding by nature. Most criminals, in contrast, aren’t the type to go through the approval process, submit to a criminal background check, and pay their fees. For example, during the nineteen years between October 1, 1987 and December 31, 2006, Florida issued 1,228,284 concealed weapons permits but revoked just 158, or .01 percent, for any type of firearms violation. Even this figure exaggerates the risks, as almost all of these revocations were for non-threatening incidents such as unknowingly carrying a gun into a restricted area.88 What’s more, the rate of permit revocations in Florida has fall
en over time, with zero to one revocations for firearms violations being recorded in each of the last five years.89 Studying the issue, the National Journal found that permit holders “turn out to be unusually law-abiding, safer even than off-duty cops.”90
It is also clear that legally owning a gun makes a person less likely to get hurt by a criminal. While police are, of course, extremely important in fighting crime, officers almost always arrive at the scene only after a crime has been committed. So what can individuals themselves do to deter criminals? Having a gun, in fact, is by far the most effective course of action. This is the finding of the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey, an annual survey conducted since 1973 of about 77,000 households comprising nearly 134,000 people.91 This holds true whether the criminal is armed or unarmed and regardless of the location of the attack.
During the 1990s, for example, assault victims who used a gun for self-protection were injured 3.6 percent of the time. This contrasts with 5.4 percent of those who ran or drove away, 12.6 percent of those who screamed, and 13.6 percent of those who threatened the attacker without a weapon. Those who took no self-protective action at all fared the worst—55.2 percent of them were injured.92 Gandhi’s strategy of peaceful resistance may have worked against British imperialists who could be embarrassed by public attention, but criminals require other methods of persuasion.
Economist Stephen Bronars and I found significant evidence that criminals move out of areas where concealed handguns are legalized.93 Our study analyzed counties that border each other on opposite sides of a state line. In such cases, counties in states that adopt right-to-carry laws see a drop in violent crime that is about four times larger than the simultaneous increase in violent crimes in the adjacent counties without such laws. Violent criminals may be brutal, but they’re not necessarily stupid. At least they’re smart enough to leave towns where they risk running into citizens carrying concealed handguns.
Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't Page 14
