Citation

Kaplan J, Chalfin A. Criminol. Public Policy 2019; 18(1): 171-200.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, American Society of Criminology, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1745-9133.12424

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Research Summary The results reported in a large amount of the criminology literature reveal that hiring police officers leads to reductions in crime and that investments in police are an efficient means of crime control compared with investments in prisons. One concern, however, is that because police officers make arrests in the course of their duties, police hiring, albeit efficient, is an inevitable driver of "mass incarceration." In this article, we consider the dynamics through which police hiring affects downstream incarceration rates. Policy Implications Using state-level panel data as well county-level data from California, we uncover novel evidence in favor of a potentially unexpected and yet entirely intuitive result: that investments in law enforcement are unlikely to increase state prison populations markedly and may even lead to a modest decrease in the number of state prisoners. As such, investments in police may, in fact, yield a "double dividend" to society by reducing incarceration rates as well as crime rates.

Language: en

Keywords

crime; incarceration rates; police; prison