There is little evidence that Mexican immigration leads to more crime in US cities

Although crime rates in the U.S. have decreased at the same time that the foreign-born population has doubled, many believe increased immigration is linked with more crime. Using migration triggered by extreme weather to simulate random immigration, Aaron Chalfin tests this hypothesis and finds little connection between Mexican immigration and crime in U.S. cities

The Cost of the Death Penalty in Maryland

Analyzes 1,136 capital cases between 1978 and 1999 to estimate the total costs to the state's taxpayers (i.e., prison and adjudication costs for the duration of the case) when the death penalty is sought compared to when it is not

COVID-19 Has Strengthened the Relationship Between Alcohol Consumption and Domestic Violence

A large body of evidence documents a link between alcohol consumption and violence involving intimate partners and close family members. Recent scholarship suggests that since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent stay-at-home orders, there has been a marked increase in domestic violence. This research considers an important mechanism behind the increase in domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic: an increase in the riskiness of alcohol consumption. We combine 911 call data with newly available high-resolution microdata on visits to bars and liquor stores in Detroit, MI and find that the strength of the relationship between visits to alcohol outlets and domestic violence more than doubles starting in March 2020. We find more limited evidence with respect to non-domestic assaults, supporting our conclusion that it is not alcohol consumption per se but alcohol consumption at home that is a principal driver of domestic violence

Crime, the Criminal Justice System, and Socioeconomic Inequality

Crime rates in the United States have declined to historical lows since the early 1990s. Prison and jail incarceration rates as well as community correctional populations have increased greatly since the mid-1970s. Both of these developments have disproportionately impacted poor and minority communities. In this paper, we document these trends. We then present an assessment of whether the crime declines can be attributed to the massive expansion of the U.S. criminal justice system. We argue that the crime is certainly lower as results of this expansion and the crime rate in the early 1990s was likely a third lower than what they would have been absent changes in sentencing practices in the 1980s. However, there is little evidence of an impact of the further stiffening of sentences during the 1990s, a period when prison and other correctional populations expanded rapidly. Hence, the growth in criminal justice populations since 1990s have exacerbated socioeconomic inequality in the U.S. without generating much benefit in terms of lower crime rates

What is the Contribution of Mexican Immigration to U.S. Crime Rates? Evidence from Rainfall Shocks in Mexico*

Abstract This paper identifies a causal effect of Mexican immigration on crime using an instrument that leverages temporal variation in rainfall in different regions in Mexico as well as persistence in regional Mexico-U.S. migration networks. The intuition behind the instrument is that deviations in Mexican weather patterns isolate quasi-random variation in the assignment of Mexican immigrants to U.S. cities. My findings indicate that Mexican immigration is associated with no appreciable change in the rates of either violent or property crimes in U.S. cities. Notably, this is a precisely estimated null effect as I can reject that a one percentage point increase in the rainfall-induced share of Mexican migrants leads to greater than a one percent increase in the crime rate. JEL Classification: J15, K42, R10

Are U.S. cities underpoliced?: Theory and evidence

We document the extent of measurement errors in the basic data set on police used in the literature on the effect of police on crime. Analyzing medium to large U.S. cities over 1960-2010, we obtain measurement error corrected estimates of the police elasticity. The magnitudes of our estimates are similar to those obtained in the quasi-experimental literature, but our approach yields much greater parameter certainty for the most costly crimes, which are the key parameters for welfare analysis. Our analysis suggests that U.S. cities are substantially underpoliced