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Determinants Of Local Police Protection Expenditures: A Panel Study Of Large City Governments, Zachary A. Carter

Culminating Projects in Economics

Since the 1980’s, justice system expenditures in the United States have increased nearly 300%, adjusting for inflation. And though rates of violent and property crimes have decreased by close to 50% since the 1990’s, total arrests have fallen by only 20% in the same period. The relationship between crime and police expenditures has yet to be answered to a definitive degree. This paper attempts to identify the social and economic factors that drive the changes in per-capita police spending of 140 large city governments in the United States, for the eight year period of 2005 to 2012. A fixed-effects panel …