CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 53Crime Patterns and InterventionsPolicing Practices and PerceptionsCriminal Justice and Penology

Carrots, Sticks and Broken Windows

Open access
Corman, Hope, Mocan, Naci·2002·National Bureau of Economic Research
DOI 10.3386/w9061
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of economics conditions (carrots) and sanctions (sticks) on murder, assault, robbery, burglary and motor vehicle theft in New York City, using monthly time-series data spanning 1974-1999.Carrots are measured by the unemployment rate and the real minimum wage; sticks are measured by felony arrests, police force and New York City residents in prison.In addition, the paper tests the validity of the "broken windows" hypothesis, where misdemeanor arrests are used as a measure of broken windows policing.The broken windows hypothesis has validity in case of robbery and motor vehicle theft.The models explain between 33 and 86 percent of the observed decline in these crimes between 1990 and 1999.While both economic and deterrence variables are important in explaining the decline in crime, the contribution of deterrence measures is larger than those of economic variables.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.3386/w9061

Cites

7 of 7 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Deterrence measures are correlated with crime rates.

    “As it has been fairly well documented in previous research that deterrence measures are correlated with crime rates (Bun et al. 2019;Corman and Mocan 2002;Levitt 2002), de-policing could increase crime.”

    From BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTS, FATAL POLICE INTERACTIONS, AND CRIME (2021) · cites this paper as Corman and Mocan 2002

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 24

  1. Cooper, Michael ," You're Under Burglary Arrest," The New York Times, 12/01/96, Vol. 146 Issue 50628, Section 13 p1, 0p, 1 chart, 1 graph, 10bw.
  2. Corman, Hope and H. Naci Mocan, "A Time-Series Analysis of Burglary, Deterrence, and Drug Abuse in New York City," American Economic Review, Vol. 90, No. 3, June 2000, pp. 584-604.
  3. Corman, Hope, Theodore Joyce and Norman Lovitch, "Criminal Deterrence and the Business Cycle in New York City: A VAR Approach," Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 69, No. 4 (November 1987), pp. 695-700.
  4. Donohue, John J. III, and Steven Levitt, "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Burglary," Quarterly Journal of Economics, CXVI:II, pp. 379-420, May 2001.
  5. Donohue, John J., III and Peter Siegelman, "Allocating Resources Among Prisons and Social Programs In the Battle Against Burglary," Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1 pp. 1-44 January, 1998.
  6. Freeman, Richard B. ," The Economics of Burglary," Orley Ashenfelter and David Card, eds, Handbook of Labor Economics, Vol. 3C, Chapter 52, pp. 3529-71. Amsterdam: Netherlands, North-Holland Publishers, 1999.
  7. Freeman, Richard B., "The Labor Market," Burglary, James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia (eds.), pp. 171-91. San Francisco: ICS Press, 1995.
  8. Freeman, Richard B.; "Burglary and Unemployment." Burglary and Public Policy, Wilson, James Q. (ed.), San Francisco:ICS Press, p89-106, 1983.
  9. Giacopassi, David and David R. Forde, " Broken Windows, Crumpled Fenders, and Burglary," Journal of Criminal Justice, Vol. 28, pp. 397-405, September/October 2000.
  10. Gould, Eric D., David B. Mustard and Bruce A. Weinberg, "Burglary Rates and Local Labor Market Opportunities in the United States: 1977-1997," The Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 84, no. 1 (2002).
  11. Grogger, Jeffrey T., "Market Wages and Youth Burglary," Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 16, No. 4, October 1998, pp. 756-791.
  12. Hashimoto, Masanori; "The Minimum Wage Law and Youth Burglarys: Time-Series Evidence." The Journal of Law and Economics, Vol 30, pp. 443-464, October 1987.
  13. Joyce Theodore and Naci Mocan, "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Adoslescent Childbearing in New York City," American Journal of Public Health, 80:3, pp. 273-8, 1990.
  14. Kahan, Dan M., "Social Meaning and the Economic Analysis of Burglary," The Journal of Legal Studies, XXVII(2) Part 2: 609-622, 1998.
  15. Levitt, Steven D. ,"Why Do Increased Burglary Arrest Rates Appear to Reduce Burglary: Deterrence, Incapacitation, or Measurement Error?" Economic Inquiry, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 353-372, July 1998a.
  16. Levitt, Steven D.; "Juvenile Burglary and Punishment." Journal of Political Economy, Vol 106, No 6, p1156-1185, December 1998b
  17. Levitt, Steven D.; "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Burglary." The American Economic Review, Vol 87, No 3, p270-290, June 1997.
  18. Levitt, Steven D.; "The Effect of Prison Population Size on Burglary Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation." The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol 3, No 2, p319-351, May 1996
  19. Marvell, Thomas B. and Carlisle E. Moody, "Prison Population Growth and Burglary Reduction," Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Vol. 10 pp. 109-40 March 1994.
  20. Nelson, James F., " Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Processing Persons Burglary Arrested for Misdemeanor Burglarys: New York State, 1985-1986," Office of Justice Systems Analysis, New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, July, 1991.
  21. Nelson, James F., " Disparities in Processing Felony Burglary Arrests in New York State, 1990-1992," Bureau of Research and Evaluation, New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, July, 1995.
  22. Nichols, Hans, "Criminal Thoughts: Giuliani's Shadow," The Wall Street Journal Europe, April 19, 2002, p. A12.
  23. Raphael, Steven and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer , "Identifying the Effect of Unemployment on Burglary," Journal of Law and Economics, 44(1): 259-284 , 2001.
  24. Sampson, R. J. and J. Cohen , "Deterrent Effects of the Police on Burglary: A Replication and Theoretical Extension," Law & Society Review. 1988

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Corman, H., & Mocan, N.
Affiliations
National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
ORCID
Corman, Hope
Venue
National Bureau of Economic Research
Publisher
National Bureau of Economic Research
Published
2002-07
DOI
10.3386/w9061
OpenAlex
W3124808924
Cited by
53
References
7
Citations by year
2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2022: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 1
Type
report
Language
en
Open access
Locations
National Bureau of Economic Research (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime Patterns and Interventions
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Policing Practices and Perceptions
  • Social Sciences › Law › Criminal Justice and Penology
Keywords
crime deterrence, broken windows policing, economic conditions and crime, unemployment, minimum wage, felony arrests, police, incarceration, crime decline, murder, assault, robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft, New York City

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review