Crime

Blog

LSE US Politics and Policy:

Catalytic converter thefts rise and fall with global metal prices

Catalytic convertors reduce the harmful emissions produced by vehicles with combustion engines and contain valuable metals like platinum, In new research, Gerald Foong, Stephen Machin and Matteo Sandi look at the relatio...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Youth crime and delinquency in and out of school

Ten years of idiosyncratic variation in school closure dates for all secondary schools in England are combined with administrative records of educational and criminal trajectories linked at the individual level to study ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

The complex relationship between education and criminal activity

Reducing crime starts with both school attendance and conflict resolution...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Better stealing than dealing: how do felony theft thresholds impact crime?

From 2005 to 2019, forty US states raised the dollar value threshold delineating misdemeanor and felony theft, reducing the expected punishment for a subset of property crimes. Using an event study framework, we observe ...Read more...

Blog

LSE British Politics and Policy:

What can we learn about youth crime from weekday school closures?

Schools are lauded for their ability to keep young people away from crime and on the right path. But what happens behind the school gates? Janine Boshoff and Matteo Sandi reveal a more complex story - one where schoolyar...Read more...

CEP policy analysis

Domestic abuse: improving risk assessment and response by the police (policy brief)

Domestic abuse remains a pervasive challenge worldwide. According to data from the Office for National Statistics, domestic abuse affects one in five people aged 16 and above in the UK. In 2021, the then Conservative gov...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Youth crime and delinquency in and out of school

This paper combines ten years of idiosyncratic variation in school closure dates for all secondary schools in England with administrative records of educational and criminal trajectories linked at the individual level to...Read more...

Blog

LSE:

How crowd crush prevention technology could keep us safe at events (video)

In this film, we explore how cutting-edge artificial intelligence is being developed to assist event security and police forces in managing public safety at large-scale gatherings. We speak with Professor Tom Kirchmaier ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Crime and education

Research studying connections between crime and education is a prominent aspect of the big increase of publication and research interest in the economics of crime field. This work demonstrates a crime reducing impact of ...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Police workload linked to victim statement withdrawals

Partners or family members are responsible for nearly half of the women killed each year in the UK, and many of these deaths follow long periods of domestic abuse. Yet in recent years, the rate of statement withdrawal by...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Commuting for crime

People care about crime, with the spatial distribution of both actual and perceived crime affecting the amenities from living in different areas and residential decisions. The literature finds that crime tends to happen ...Read more...

Blog

Suma:

The economic impact of local organized crime

Magdalena Dominguez discusses organised crime in Uruguay, showing that although it has not reached extreme levels like in other countries in the region, is leaving a worrying mark. She shares measures and approaches Urug...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How does compulsory school attendance affect youth violence?

Keeping young people in education can provide them with protection from crime as well as limiting opportunities for them to engage in criminal activities. But a policy of raising the age of compulsory attendance may also...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

Youth custody: who ends up there and how does it affect their later lives?

There are severe long-term consequences for young people in the UK who spend time in youth custody, the majority of whom are boys. Those with very low grades, in special education facilities and with additional education...Read more...

Blog

Economics Observatory:

How have minorities been treated by the UK's judicial system?

Disparate treatment of minorities by the judicial system is not a construct of modern institutions. Irish defendants and victims faced harsher treatment and outcomes at London's Old Bailey in the 19th century. Lessons fr...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Does homeownership reduce crime? A radical housing reform from the UK

"Right to Buy" (RTB), a large-scale natural experiment whereby incumbent tenants in public housing could buy properties at heavily-subsidised prices, increased the UK homeownership rate by over 10 percentage points betwe...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Lost boys? Secondary education and crime

We study the effect of secondary education on criminal behavior of young men in Finland. We exploit admission cut-offs in over-subscribed programs and estimate the effect of gaining access to a) any secondary school vs n...Read more...

CentrePiece article

CEP Insights: Crime

Findings from CEP researchers about how crime is influenced by wages, benefits, education, policing, and lockdowns....Read more...

Chapter

Social prevention of crime: alternatives to policing measures in an urban context

in A Modern Guide to Economics of Crime

In this chapter we review the existing literature in economics related to crime prevention policies beyond police efforts. First, we highlight the ongoing and notable debate over the possible public policies to follow fo...Read more...

Blog

English Premier League podcast: EPLpod:

Football, alcohol and domestic abuse

Domestic abuse increases following football games - and this increase is driven by alcohol-related abuse, a new study from the London School of Economics and Political Science finds. The research from the LSE's Centre fo...Read more...

CentrePiece article

In brief... Tackling domestic violence using machine learning

Artificial intelligence could help to protect victims of domestic violence, according to research by Jeffrey Grogger, Ria Ivandic and Tom Kirchmaier...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Domestic abuse in times of quarantine

Crime economists Ria Ivandic and Tom Kirchmaier look at data on domestic abuse calls to the police in London....Read more...

Blog

LSE News:

Artificial intelligence could help protect victims of domestic violence

Ria Ivandic finds in the United States, roughly one in four women experience serious intimate partner violence over their lifetimes...Read more...

Journal article

Economic Journal:

Diversity and neighbourhood satisfaction

This article investigates the impact of ethnic diversity on individuals' satisfaction with their neighbourhoods. It uses panel data and a variety of empirical methods to control for potential endogeneity of diversity and...Read more...

Journal article

SSM - Population Health:

Crime victimisation over time and sleep quality

We here consider the relationship between the individual time profile of crime victimisation and sleep quality. Sleep quality worsens with contemporaneous crime victimisation, with physical violence having a larger effec...Read more...

Journal article

Review of Economics and Statistics:

Crime scars: recessions and the making of career criminals

Recessions lead to short-term job loss, lower levels of happiness and decreasing income levels. There is growing evidence that workers who first join the labour market during economic downturns suffer from poor job match...Read more...

Journal article

The Review of Economic Studies:

The effect of police response time on crime clearance rates

Police agencies devote vast resources to minimizing the time that it takes them to attend the scene of a crime. Despite this, the long-standing consensus is that police response time has no meaningful effect on the likel...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Crime and violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: towards evidence-based policies

Latin America and the Caribbean account for a third of the world?s homicides but under 10% of the world?s population. What?s more, homicide rates in the region are higher than they should be given countries? levels of in...Read more...

CEP election analysis

Fighting Crime: Can the Police do more with less?

The coalition government's austerity programme has resulted in some sizeable reductions in the police workforce, yet crime has continued to fall. A key question for the next Parliament is whether further real-terms reduc...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Crime deterrence: evidence from the London 2011 riots

Significant riots occurred in London in August 2011. The riots took place in highly localised geographical areas, with crime going up hugely in the affected sub-wards. The criminal justice response was to make sentencing...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Lessons from the economics of crime

Olivier Marie explains the value of an economic approach to the analysis, design and evaluation of crime-fighting policies....Read more...

Book

Lessons from the Economics of Crime
What Reduces Offending?

Research from the United States, Europe, and South America demonstrates the usefulness of the tools of economic analysis for the study of crime. Economists who bring the tools of economic analysis to bear on the stu...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Immigrant Enclaves and Crime

There is conflicting evidence on the consequences of immigrant neighbourhood segregation for individual outcomes, with various studies finding positive, negative or insubstantial effects. In this paper, we document the e...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Review:

Panic on the streets of London: police, crime, and the July 2005 terror attacks

In this paper we study the causal impact of police on crime, looking at what happened to crime and police before and after the terror attacks that hit central London in July 2005. The attacks resulted in a large redeploy...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

Crime and police resources: the street crime initiative

In this paper we look at the connection between police resources and crime by focussing on a large-scale policy intervention?the Street Crime Initiative?that was introduced in England and Wales in 2002. This allocated ad...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

The crime reducing effect of education

In this article, we study the crime reducing potential of education, presenting causal statistical estimates based upon a law that changed the compulsory school leaving age in England and Wales. We frame the analysis in ...Read more...

CEP policy analysis

Reducing Crime: More Police, More Prisons or More Pay?

Just over 4.3 million crimes were recorded by the police forces of England and Wales in 2009/10, of which 71% were property crimes and 23% were violent crimes. The British Crime Survey, which asks consistent questions ov...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Crime and Immigration: Evidence from Large Immigrant Waves

This paper examines the relationship between immigration and crime in a setting where large migration flows offer an opportunity to carefully appraise whether the populist view that immigrants cause crime is borne out by...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Crime Reducing Effect of Education

In this paper, we present evidence on empirical connections between crime and education, using various data sources from Britain. A robust finding is that criminal activity is negatively associated with higher levels of ...Read more...

CEP election analysis

CEP Election Analysis 2010 - The complete Series, discussing research on some of the key policy battlegrounds of the 2010 General Election

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CEP election analysis

Reducing Crime: More Police, More Prisons or More Pay?

Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Panic on the Streets of London: Police, Crime and the July 2005 Terror Attacks

In this paper we study the causal impact of police on crime by looking at what happened to crime before and after the terror attacks that hit central London in July 2005. The attacks resulted in a large redeployment of p...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Panic on the streets of London

The terrorist attacks of 7 July 2005 resulted in a very large redeployment of police officers to central London boroughs. New research by Mirko Draca, Stephen Machin and Robert Witt looks at the impact of this increased ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Human Resources:

Crime and economic incentives

We explore the role that economic incentives, particularly changes in wages at the bottom end of the wage distribution, play in determining crime rates. We use data on the police force areas of England and Wales between ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Crime and Benefit Sanctions

In this paper we look at the relationship between crime and economic incentives in a different way to other work in this area. We look at changes in unemployment benefits and the imposition of benefit sanctions as a mean...Read more...