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The Financial Times:
When crime stops paying

1 August 2014

Were the severe sentences to participants in the 2011 riots an essential crisis response or a draconian overreaction? To an economist, they are something else: a fascinating natural experiment. With the news full of crushing punishments, it must have seemed plausible that the risks of committing a crime had soared. So did the threat of harsh punishments deter crime? The usual statistical problem is that sentencing policy might influence crime rates but crime rates might equally influence sentencing policy. Cause and effect are hard to disentangle. In the case of the riots, however, the surge in crime that provoked the crackdown was sudden, unexpected, highly localised and brief. The sentencing response was drawn-out and stories of harsh sentences appeared in the national and London press for months. As a result, a mugger or burglar in an area of London entirely unaffected by the riots might still feel conscious that the mood of the judiciary had changed. Three economists, Brian Bell, Laura Jaitman and Stephen Machin, used this sudden change in the judicial wind to measure the impact of tough sentences on crime. Across London, they found a significant drop in ''riot crimes'' - burglary, criminal damage and violence against the person - over the six months following the riots. Meanwhile, other crimes showed a tendency to increase, as though criminals were substituting away from the ''expensive'' crimes and towards the ''cheaper'' ones.

This article was published in the Financial Times on August 1, 2014
Link to article here

Related publications
Crime Deterrence: Evidence from the London 2011 Riots, Brian Bell, Laura Jaitman and Stephen Machin, LSE mimeo, Revised October 2013.

Related links
Brian Bell webpage
Stephen Machin webpage
Labour Markets Programme webpage

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