Other Offenses and Laws

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Roger Brinner

Besides the offenses already mentioned, several other very interesting types are considered in the literature.

Gun Laws

Canada introduced a law in 1977 to restrict the carrying of firearms. In principal, such laws can have two different consequences: potential offenders may have less access to firearms which would lead to fewer armed robberies; or more victims are unarmed and become easier to rob which would lead to an increase of armed robberies. Mauser and Maki (2003) study robbery, armed robbery and armed robbery with firearms in Canada during that time. They use all combinations of covariates and do not find, using OLS, any consistent results (halve of the results support deterrence theory, the other halve does not). GLS showed a slight positive effect of the law, implying that robbers, who tend to ignore such laws, have larger chances to encounter unarmed victims. The probability and severity of punishment are correctly signed but not significant.

John Lott and David Mustard are probably the most popular advocates for “right-to-carry con-cealed handgun gun” laws in the scientific literature¹⁸. InLott and Mustard(1997) they use county panel data of the USA and find, relying on dummy variables, large significant effects of such laws for Index I crimes and substitution effects into property crimes. Additionally, they conclude that the monetary gains (by deterred crimes) are much larger than the marginal monetary drawbacks (e.g., deadly incidents).

Dezhbakhsh and Rubin(1998) reevaluate Lott’s data and refrain from using dummy variables to analyze the effect of such laws. Instead, they compare the coefficients of the exogenous vari-ables of two different regressions: counties with and without such laws. If the change of the parameters is significant, concealed-handgun-laws have an effect. Overall, only murder is slightly reduced by the usage of such gun laws for some states (which do not have such a law). The positive effect on many robbery rates is explained by the low potential threat of concealed guns because robbers are often already armed and thus protected against armed resistance. In another study, Dezhbakhsh et al.(2001) use Lott’s data and find that NRA (National Rifle Association) memberships are associated with higher murder rates. Cook and Ludwig (2002) add that guns provide a valuable loot for offenders and, using data from the UCR and NCVS, conclude that the deterrent effect is outweighed by the increased incentives. A different approach is implemented byLudwig(1998). He utilizes the minimum age required to possess a gun and the age information of the cleared homicides. If these gun laws do deter, the homicide rates for adults should decrease while the rates for juveniles should be unaffected (or increase in the case of replacement). Using a differences-in-differences-in-differences approach, he cannot find any deterrent effect. Summa-rizing the literature,Levitt (2004) concentrates on the receding crime in the USA in the 90s and concludes that gun control laws and carrying concealed guns laws had no effect.

In an a answer to Black and Nagin (1998), who point out several flaws in Lott’s work, Lott harshly rejects their criticism and gives a reevaluation of his data set and shows that violent crime increased until the gun laws were passed and than sharply dropped after a short lag (Lott, 1998).

Very strong deterrent effects are also found byBronars and Lott(1998) who add that there also

18A large portion of the literature about this topic is somehow related to Lott.

exist serious spillover effects because “criminals tend to move across communities more readily in response to changes in concealed handgun laws than in response to changes in arrest rates”.

Studying safe-storage gun lawsLott and Whitley(2001) find no evidence that such laws “reduce either juvenile accidental gun deaths or suicides”. Contrarily, they report that these laws “impair people’s ability to use guns defensively” and even increase violent and property crime.

Sports

Several authors utilize changes of rules in the world of sports. McCormick and Tollison (1984) use an annual basketball tournament in the United States (1954-1983) to draw conclusions from sports concerning the effect of the police on the arrest rate and subsequently the crime rate. They analyze the introduction of a third referee in 1979 and find that the number of fouls are reduced by 34% while the number of false decisions is also reduced. Additionally, the variance of the results diminish and the games end with higher scores. They conclude that more police should indeed reduce crime.

Studying the introduction of a second referee in the National Hockey League (NHL) in some games of the season 1998/99, Allen (2002) reports that the number of detected fouls increased.

This effect is declared to be a reporting effect (more “offenses” can be detected with a second referee). The model used can explain non-violent fouls very well while violent fouls seem to hap-pen randomly. The failure to detect any deterrent effect may result from the usage of inadequate data asLevitt(2002a) points out. In his model, using the same season, the number of actual mi-nor fouls did not change significantly while, at the same time, the second referee did not change the probability of detecting such fouls as well. In the season 1999/2000, the second referee was used in randomly selected games. Using an instrumentation (the actual number of games played with one referee is used as an instrument because the number was equal for all teams at the end of the season) approach, Heckelman and Yates(2003) distinguish monitor and deterrent effects.

While they find strong monitoring effects for fouls, penalty minutes, minor and major penalties, no deterrent effects are found.

The English Premiere League is used byWitt(2005) to identify deterrent effects of the tighten-ing of rules in 1998. He finds that the number of red cards remained constant while the number of yellow cards significantly increased. Thus, he argues that there was a deterrent effect because in-creasing the pool of fouls punishable by a red card (e.g., tackle from behind) lead to a substitution by less severely punishable offenses.

Corruption

Since reliable data about corruption is difficult to obtain, there are only some isolated studies.

Vinod(1999) uses the corruption perception index (based on a survey of “business people, risk analysts, and the public”). He employs the ratio of judges to population as the independent vari-able and concludes that increasing the efficiency of the legal system indeed decreases corruption.

Goel and Rich (1989) use the ratio of officials convicted for bribery to all officials. Both con-ditional conviction rate and the sentence length are significant while police expenditures are not.

Furthermore, bribery increases when unemployment or consumption increase or wages decrease.

InGoel and Nelson(1998) they use the conviction rate as the dependent variable and find “that government size, in particular spending by state governments, does indeed have a strong posi-tive influence on corruption” while only the police expenditures and the number of other justice department employees are significant deterrents.

Cheating in the Classroom

Although “cheating in the classroom” is certainly a very specialized topic, there are several studies which deal with this type of malpractice. Results are ambiguous. Mixon and Mixon (1996) asked economic students and find mixed results for the probability of punishment and correctly (i.e., supporting the deterrence hypothesis) signed variables for the severity of punishment. No deterrent effects are found by Bunn et al. (1992) using another survey of economic students.

Nevertheless, other results are that peer influences (knowing of other students who cheat) and bad grades (penalty is less threatening) foster cheating behavior.

By contrast,Houston(1983) report, asking psychology students, that good students cheat more but do react to threats of punishment while bad students cheat less but do not react to threats.

However, the threats are only effective when their severity passes some threshold. The gender os the students is not relevant.

Other Offenses

While most studies deal with standard offenses or deterrence measures, there are some studies which are out of the ordinary. DiPasquale and Glaeser(1998) analyze riots in U.S. cities in the sixties. As expected, ethnic reasons are important factors, not police variables.Sirakaya and Uysal (1997) analyze the compliance of tourists with local guidelines in the USA, Canada and Ecuador.

Using three factors - deterrence, education and awards/motivation - they find that only education is relevant. Fujii and Mak(1979) and Fujii and Mak(1980) use data from Hawaii and find that increasing tourism also increases crime (especially burglary and rape) in general and that crime is more concentrated in areas populated by tourists. They advise to reduce the overall number of tourists and to concentrate more on wealthier visitors. Tourists in Hawaii are also studied byGhali et al.(1983) who come to similar conclusions but find such effects for theft but not for burglary.

Although arson is classified as an Index I crime, almost no study considers it.Cloninger(1981) and Cloninger (1990) are exceptions and he concludes that arson, interpreted as an instrument used for insurance fraud, is significantly deterred by the corresponding clearance rate. Another unusual study is that of Braithwaite and Makkai(1991). They analyze corporate deterrence by surveying managers of Australian nursing homes and do not find any influence of the severity of punishment but some effects for the probability of punishment on official compliance. Landes

(1978) studies airplane hijacking in the USA. The arrest rate and sentence length are found to be significant deterring hijacking while the conditional conviction rate is not. He distinguishes between ex ante (e.g., screenings) and ex post (e.g., marshals) deterrence measures and considers a trend using international data.

Insurances can have the perverse effect of increasing the number of insured events (e.g., un-employment insurance may increase unun-employment). However,Cameron(1989) uses state-data and concludes that no such effects can be found for victim compensation rewards for rape and aggravated assault. Clarke(1966) studies school boy absconding and its corporal punishment in 1960-1964 in Kingswood, United Kingdom. During that time absconding school was punished by strokes with a cane. He finds that juniors are not affected while seniors are. This is explained by psychic pressure (homesickness, indisposition) which is more dominant for younger boys.

Commonly, offenders are assumed to be aware of their illegal or undesirable behavior. This may not be true in all cases, even if they are fully aware of the consequences because the punishment may have refined their point of view about the offense. Gneezy and Rustichini (2000) report an experiment they made in an Israeli kindergarten. Many parents picked up their children too late so that the kindergarten teachers had to stay longer. Therefore, a fine was introduced for parents who showed up too late. Instead of relieving the problem, the occurrences of late parents even increased because they interpreted the fine as a price which they payed for coming too late. Since the fines were moderate, they seemed to be smaller than the opportunity costs of arriving earlier.

They conclude that this reasoning might be transferred to similar problems like tax evasion. It seems reasonable that other misdemeanors, like false parking or speeding, may also apply to this scenario.