Computing Crime: Information Technology, Police Effectiveness and the Organization of Policing

45 Pages Posted: 14 Nov 2006

See all articles by Luis Garicano

Luis Garicano

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR); IE Business School

Paul S. Heaton

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Date Written: September 2006

Abstract

How does information technology (IT) affect the organization of police work? How does it in turn affect police crime-fighting effectiveness? To answer these questions, we construct a new panel data set of police departments covering 1987-2003. We find that while IT adoption had substantial effects on a wide range of police organizational practices, it had, by itself, a negligible impact on crime-fighting effectiveness. These results are robust to various methods for controlling for agency-level characteristics and the endogeneity of IT use. We then suggest and test two explanations for this puzzle. First, we demonstrate that use of a particular technology, computerized record-keeping, increased recorded crime rates. Second, we provide evidence that IT investments only had a substantial impact on crime clearance rates and crime rates when undertaken as part of a broad set of complementary organizational practices such as those in the Compstat program.

Keywords: Information technology, organization, hierarchy, skills, police

JEL Classification: K42, L23, M5, O33

Suggested Citation

Garicano, Luis and Garicano, Luis and Heaton, Paul S., Computing Crime: Information Technology, Police Effectiveness and the Organization of Policing (September 2006). CEPR Discussion Paper No. 5837, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=944874

Luis Garicano (Contact Author)

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

London
United Kingdom

IE Business School ( email )

Calle María de Molina, 11
Madrid, 28006
Spain

Paul S. Heaton

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School ( email )

3501 Sansom Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/pheaton/

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
18
Abstract Views
2,684
PlumX Metrics