More Guns Less Crime by John Jr (best free e book reader .txt) 📕

any type, so there are few missing observations for the violent-crime arrest rate (Stephen G. Bronars and John R. Lott, Jr., " Criminal Deterrence, Geographic Spillovers, and Right-to-Carry Laws," American Economic Review 88 (May 1998): 475—79).

26. While I find it difficult to believe that anyone would argue that demographic factors are not important in explaining crime rates, I did try a couple of specification tests. Paring the demographic variables down to the percentage of the population that is black, the percentage of the population that is white, the percentage of the population that is male, and the percentage of the population in the six different age classifications leaves the results essentially unchanged. Eliminating the demographic variables entirely reduces the estimated drop in violent-crime rates from right-to-carry laws by at most one percentage point.

27. The way that the county-level data were compiled was changed in 1994. Prior to that time those jurisdictions within a county which provided data for fewer than six months were estimated to have the same offense rates as the rest of the county. From 1994 onward, the imputation method was applied only to counties with less than three months of data. For jurisdictions with at least six months of data prior to 1994 and at least three months of data after that time, the jurisdiction was calculated to have 12/N offenses, where N is the number of months reported.

Because of concerns that this might affect estimates using data after 1993,1 reran the regressions reported in table 9.1 by including a variable for the change in a county's crime rate between 1993 and 1994. This change variable was included for the 1994—1996 observations to account for the relative differences that this change in measurement might have had across different counties. The results are similar to those already reported. The annual difference in the trends in violent-crime rates before and after the passage of a right-to-carry law are —1.4 percent for murder, —2.94 percent for rape, —2.8 percent for robbery, and —3.12 percent for aggravated assault. All the results are significant at better than the .01 percent level with F-tests of 17.36, 83.33, 87.38, and 87.31, respectively.

28. These data draw on research that I am currently conducting with Kevin Cremin. Kevin collected all the data used here on policing policies.

29. "[The] problem-solving effort began essentially as directed patrol operations designed to identify patterns of offending or known offenders and to deploy police to catch the offenders. All gradually evolved into quite different efforts that involved activities other than arrest and agencies other than the police. The attack on burglaries in the housing projects involved surveying tenants, cleaning the projects, creating a multiagency task force to deal with particular problems in the housing projects, and organizing the tenants not only to undertake block watches but also to make demands on city agencies. The attack on thefts from cars eventually involved the inclusion of police officers in the design of new parking lots to make them less vulnerable to theft. The attack on prostitution and robbery involved enhanced code enforcement against hotels and bars that provided the meeting places for prostitutes and their customers as well as decoy operations" (Christopher Slobogin, "Why Liberals Should Chuck the Exclusionary Rule," University of Illinois Law Review 99 (1999): 363.

30. The data on community-oriented policing, problem-oriented policing, and the broken-windows strategy were primarily obtained by using the Westlaw "News" database. For community policing, the search took the form [name of city] & "community policing" & DA(BEF 1/1/1997) & DA(AFT 1/1/1975). For problem-oriented policing, the search

NOTESTOPAGES 190-199/297

took the form ("Problem Solving Policing" or "Problem-Solving Policing" or "Problem Oriented Policing" or "Problem-Oriented Policing") & DA(AFT 1/1/1975) & DA(BEF 1/1/ 1997). Finally, for the broken-windows strategy, the search consisted of "Broken Window" & Crime & DA(AFT 1/1/1975) & DA(BEF 1/1/1997) AND NOT "Broken Windows." Other sources were also investigated. For community policing, the sources included Robert C. Trojanowicz and Hazel A. Harden, "The Status of Contemporary Community Policing Programs," National Center for Community Policing, 1985; Washington State University, Division of Governmental Studies and Services (DGSS), surveys of police administrators conducted at three-year intervals between 1978 and 1994; Anna Sampson, "National Survey of Community Policing Strategies, 1992—93"; and Robert C. Trojanowicz et al., "Community Policing: A Survey of Police Departments in the United States," 1994. However, the only one of these studies which identifies the cities is the 1985 Trojanowicz and Harden study. The authors of the other studies were unwilling to identify the cities in their samples. For the broken-windows strategy, George Kelling's book was also used to identify additional cities (George L. Kelling, Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities [New York: Free Press, 1998]).

31. John R. Lott, Jr., "Does a Helping Hand Put Others at Risk? Affirmative Action, Police Departments, and Crime," Economic Inquiry (forthcoming).

32. For example, policing policies may have changed because of concerns about future crime rates. Not adopting the change might have resulted in even more crime.

33. Bartholomew Sullivan, "Students Recall 'Unreal' Rampage," Commercial Appeal, June 11, 1998, p. Al.

34. Lance Gay, "New Gun Measure Wouldn't Have Halted School Tragedies," Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 30, 1999, p. 19A.

35. Pam Belluck and Jodi Wilgoren, "Shattered Lives—a Special Report: Caring Parents, No Answers, in Columbine Killers' Pasts," New York Times, June 29, 1999, p. Al; and Virginia Culver, "Pastor Comforts Gunman's Family," Arizona Republic, May 1, 1999, p. D7.

36. Evelyn Larrubia, Ted Rohrlich, and Andrew Blankstein, "Suspect Scouted 3 Prominent L.A. Jewish Sites as Targets," Los Angeles Times, Aug. 13, 1999, p. 1.

37. An earlier attempt by Congress to pass this law was never really enforced and was struck down by the Supreme Court