Police Officer on the Frontline or a Soldier? The Effect of Police Militarization on Crime | Zendy

Vincenzo Bove | Zendy; Evelina Gavrilova | Zendy

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Police Officer on the Frontline or a Soldier? The Effect of Police Militarization on Crime

Author(s) -

Vincenzo Bove,

Evelina Gavrilova

Publication year - 2017

Publication title -

american economic journal economic policy

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 7.868

H-Index - 62

eISSN - 1945-7731

pISSN - 1945-774X

DOI - 10.1257/pol.20150478

Subject(s) - militarization , officer , law enforcement , pentagon , criminology , deterrence (psychology) , odds , political science , deterrence theory , law , demographic economics , economics , sociology , politics , medicine , logistic regression

Sparked by high-profile confrontations between police and citizens in Ferguson, Missouri, and elsewhere, many commentators have criticized the excessive militarization of law enforcement. We investigate whether surplus military-grade equipment acquired by local police departments from the Pentagon has an effect on crime rates. We use temporal variations in US military expenditure and between-counties variation in the odds of receiving a positive amount of military aid to identify the causal effect of militarized policing on crime. We find that (i) military aid reduces street-level crime; (ii) the program is cost-effective; and (iii) there is evidence in favor of a deterrence mechanism.

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