Government Regulation of Illicit Behavior

To what extent can government actions reduce crime? I address this question using a combination of aggregate and individual data on federal grants, police employment, incarceration, and arrest records. I begin with a study of the aggregate impact of the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program that provided grants to states and localities to pay up to 75 percent of the cost for new police hires for three years. In the first chapter, coauthored with William N. Evans, we show that each officer paid for by grant funds increases the size of the force by 0.70 officers. We argue that the size of COPS grants can be used as an instrument for the size of the police force in regressions where crime is the outcome of interest. These models indicate that police added to the force by COPS generated statistically significant reductions in auto thefts, burglaries, robberies, and assaults. In the second chapter I show that not only did COPS grants temporarily increase city police employment, local governments exhibited an asymmetric response to changes in grant support, permanently increasing their police force even after the three year grant expired. Using a stylized model of policing I identify the immediate deterrent and long term incapacitative effects of police officers on crime rates using variation in the size and timing of active and expired UHP grants. My results suggest that larger police forces reduce violent crime primarily through increased incapacitation of offenders. Deterrence plays the largest role in reducing auto theft. In addition to larger police forces, longer sentences have increasingly been used by governments as a means of reducing crime. In the final chapter, I use individual data from Maryland to estimate the incapacitative effect of sentence enhancements. I find that offenders who receive sentence enhancements would on average be arrested for 2.8 criminal acts and be involved in 1.6 index crimes per person if they were released instead. This is measure of marginal incapacitation is substantially lower than existing impacts of average incapacitation, which have been incorrectly used by policy makers to justify the imposition of sentence enhancements

One for the Road: Public Transportation, Alcohol Consumption, and Intoxicated Driving

We exploit arguably exogenous train schedule changes in Washington DC to investigate the relationship between public transportation provision, the risky decision to consume alcohol, and the criminal decision to engage in alcohol–impaired driving. Using a triple differences strategy, we provide evidence that overall there was little effect on DUI arrests, alcohol related fatal traffic and alcohol related arrests. However, we find that these overall effects mask considerable heterogeneity across geographic areas and spatial shifting. Specifically, we find that areas close to bars that are within walking distance to Metro stations experience increases in alcohol related arrests and decreases in DUI arrests.

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.Comment: 5th version as accepted to PASP; 31 pages, 18 figures; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acb29

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Are Underground Markets Really More Violent? Evidence from Early 20th Century America

The violent nature of illegal markets is one rationale for legalizing the sale of narcotics. High U.S. crime rates during the 1920s are regularly presented as evidence of the strong positive relationship between market illegality and violence. The author tests this theory by exploiting state-level variation in homicides and in the passage and repeal of temperance laws before and after Federal Prohibition. Support for the "wet" cause was positively associated with homicides in dry states. However, on average, murder rates did not increase when alcohol markets were criminalized. Observed crime trends during the early 20th century are primarily explained by demographic changes. Copyright 2011, Oxford University Press.

One for the road: Public transportation, alcohol consumption, and intoxicated driving

We exploit arguably exogenous train schedule changes in Washington DC to investigate the relationship between public transportation, the risky decision to consume alcohol, and the criminal decision to engage in alcohol-impaired driving. Using variation over time, across days of the week, and over the course of the day, we provide evidence that overall there was little effect of expanded public transit service on DUI arrests, alcohol related fatal traffic and alcohol related arrests. However, we find that these overall effects mask considerable heterogeneity across geographic areas. Specifically, we find that areas where bars are within walking distance to transit stations experience increases in alcohol related arrests and decreases in DUI arrests. We observe no sign of behavioral changes in neighborhoods without any bars within walking distance of transit stations.Alcohol consumption Drunk driving Public transportation