Computing Crime: Information Technology, Police Eectiveness, and the Organization of Policing
Year: 2006
Type: preprint
Abstract: How does information technology (IT) aect the organization of police work? How does it in turn aect police crime-fighting eectiveness? 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 eects on a wide range of police organizational practices, it had, by itself, a negligible impact on crime-fighting eectiveness. 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.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Authors: Luis Garicano, Paul Heaton
Institutions: University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1598158829