Tackling Gun Crime: What Economists Have to Say

In 1996, John J. DiIulio, Jr. -- at the time a Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University – wrote an article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives entitled “Help Wanted: Economists, Crime and Public Policy” in which he appealed to economists to “conquer” the field of criminal justice by training their quantitative skills on the analysis of policy-relevant questionsabout crime. In the past decade, economists have answered this call, making substantial contributions to the field of criminal justice.

Today in Canada, the apparent expansion of gun crime and the public outcry demanding something be done to contain it havecreated a situation where the contributions of economists to the study of crime are of critical importance. In this article, I will discuss commonproposals aimed at tackling gun crime and present evidence offered by economists on the effectiveness of these approaches. First, however, I present recent statistics on homicide in Canada to clarify some potential ambiguities about the context in which this debate is taking place.

The homicide rate in Canada in 2005 was 2.04 victims per 100,000 population. While this was an 8.5% increase over the average of the previous ten years (1.88 victims per 100,000 population), it was still 24% below the recent high of 2.69 in 1991. When considering only shooting deaths, the rate in 2005 was 0.69 victims per 100,000, an increase of 21% over the average of the previous ten years (0.57), but 29% below the recent high of 0.97 in 1991. Toronto, which received a tremendous amount of media attention in 2005 for a number of high-profile shootings, had a homicide rate of 1.96, a 15% increase over the average of the previous 10 years (1.71), but again it was 23% below the recent high of 2.55 in 1991. The Toronto gun death rate was about XX%above the average gun death rate of the last 10 years (0.63), but was XX% below the recent high of XX in XX. In sum, while homicide rates (and especially rates of homicide with a firearm) experienced upswings in the last year, the current levels are notout of line when compared with recent trends and it remains to be seen whether these numbers represent substantive increases in homicides or whether they are simply random fluctuations around what is actually a downward trend.

Whether or not there have been substantive increases in gun deaths, the intense media coverage of a number high-profile cases in 2005 fueled a public outcry and promises at every level of government to crack down on gun crime. “Tough on crime” initiatives from the entire political spectrum have included similar proposals, such asstrengthening gun control laws, increasing mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes, putting more police on the streets, and supporting community-based prevention and intervention projects that target at-risk youth. Economists have made important contributions to assessing the effectiveness of at least the first three of these, and I discuss them below.

Handgun Bans Currently in Canada there is a prohibition on some handguns, primarily those with barrels shorter than 10.5 cm. All other handguns are restricted, which means an individual may get a handgun license if she passes a background check and can demonstrate that the weapon is part of a collection or that it will be used in target-shooting practice or competitions. Typically, handgun initiatives propose a sweeping ban of all handguns.

What do economists have to say about gun legislation and crime? Mark Duggan at the University of Marylandhas conducted the most rigorous study on the relationship between gun ownership and crime and findsevidence that higher rates of gun ownership may be a causal factor in higher homicide rates. However, there is currently no good evidence that gun control laws reduce homicide rates. For example, careful studies find no evidence for an impact on homicide rates of the 1976 ban on handguns in Washington, D.C. or of the 1994 U.S. Brady Handgun Violence PreventionAct. The apparent inconsistency between the findings that higher rates of gun ownership are associated with more homicides and that gun control legislation does not appear to reduce homicides can be largely reconciled given the following statistic: approximately XX% of handguns used for violent crimes in Canadaare either smuggled or stolen. There is an active black market for guns in North Americaand there is currently no good evidence to suggest that restrictions on legal gun ownership will reduce the use of guns by criminals. Though careful comparisons are not available, it is possible that policies directly targeting the illegal firearms market may be a more efficient way to get guns out of the hands of criminals than by strengthening gun control laws in conventional ways.

Tougher Sentences for Gun Crimes Perhaps the most common proposal for combating gun crime is to increase mandatory minimum prison sentences for individuals who use firearms to commit crimes. There is strong evidence to suggest that increasing punishment does indeed lower crime rates. The consensus estimate in the literature of the “elasticity” of crime with respect to incarceration is roughly -0.15, meaning that a 10% increase in the length of prison sentences is associated with a 1.5% decrease in crime. A study by University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt that attempts to control for the “reverse causality” problem -- that increased crime will cause increased incarceration – finds similar effects of increased incarceration on murder. While there are no wide-scale studies that demonstrate the effect on gun crime of sentence enhancements for gun offenders, the results on the general effect of sentence enhancements suggest that tougher sentences for gun offences may indeed be effective at reducing these crimes.

More Police A third common proposal for addressing gun crime is to increase law enforcement budgets for the purpose of getting more police on the streets. By attempting to rigorously addressthe reverse causality problem (specifically, the fact that when crime increases more police are hired) that had plagued earlier studies on the effect of more police on crime rates, economists have provided convincing evidence that more police are indeed associated with reductions in crime. In their 2000 study using nearly 30 years of monthly data from New York City, Hope Corman and H. Naci Mocan find that a 10% increase in the growth rate of arrests generates a 3.4 percent decrease in the growth rate of murders. In a 2002 study, Levitt finds that a 10% increase in the number ofpolice is associated with a 9.1% decrease in murder. While neither of these estimates specifically address gun crime, they strongly suggest that getting more police on the streets is likely to be an effective deterrent.

Thus, there is good evidence that both tougher sentences for gun offenders and getting more police on the street are effective means of reducing gun crime. Which of these measures is more efficient? Canada’s total expenditure in 2005 on policing was 9.3 billion dollars and on incarceration was 2.8 billion dollars. Using these expenditure figures along with the elasticities given above, a very rough but nevertheless useful statistic is found: one additional dollar spent on policing results in a 20% larger reduction in homicide than oneadditional dollar spent on incarceration. Thus the existing evidence suggests that of the policies I’ve discussed here, the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars in the reduction of gun crime is to get more police on the streets.

References:

Britt, Chester, Bary Kleck and David Bordua, 1996. “A Reassessment of the D.C. Gun Law: Some Cautionary Notes on the Use of Interrupted Time Series Designs for Policy Assessment.” Law and Society Review. 30:2, pp 361-381.

Corman, Hope and H. Naci Mocan, 2000. “A Time-Series Analysis of Crime, Deterrence, and Drug Abuse in new York City.” American Economic Review. June, 90, pp 584-604.

DiIulio, John J. Jr.,1996. “Help Wanted: Economists, Crime and Public Policy,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10:1, pp 3-24.

Donohue, John and Peter Siegelman, 1998. “Allocating Resources among Prisons and Social Programs in the Battle Against Crime.” Journal of Legal Studies, 27:1, pp 1-43.

Duggan, Mark, 2001. “More Guns, More Crime,” Journal of Political Economy, 109:5, pp 1986-1114.

Levitt, Steven, 1996. “The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 11 1:2, pp 319-351.

Levitt, Steven, 2002. “Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime: A Reply.” American Economic Review, September, 92, pp 1244-1250.

Ludwig, Jens, and Philip Cook, 2000. “Homicide and Suicide Rates Associated with Implementation of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 284:5, pp 585-591.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada Firearms Centre, Fact Sheets on Firearms, 2006.

Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics:Annual Homicide Survey, 1961-2005.

Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics: Police Administration Survey, 2005.

Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics: Resources, Expenditures and Personnel Survey, 2004/2005.

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