CLEAN - LSE Seminar Series - Emily Owens (University of California, Irvine)

The next CLEAN seminar, in collaboration with LSE, will take place on Wednesday, April 10th 2024, from 4-5 p.m. Italian time.

The presenter will be Emily Owens (University of California, Irvine). The title of the paper is "Does Neighborhood Investment Actually Affect Crime? New Evidence from LIHTC and Smartphone-base Measures of Policing".

Abstract:

Extensive research has found that place-based neighborhood investments lead to lower crime.  This has lead both academics and practitioners to propose altering public spaces as an alternative to police-centered policies to reduce crime.  We explore another channel linking local investment to lower crime—that police alter their patrolling decisions in response to changes in the built environment-using novel smartphone location data on actual police patrol. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in the Qualified Census Tracts (QCTs) status generated by a cap limiting the total number of people in a metropolitan area who can live in a QCT. Using a matching-based strategy, we find that police increases their patrolling frequency in QCTs, and the increase in patrol is large enough to explain all violent crime reduction observed in these areas. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding how police respond to local urban development polices prior to framing them as substitutes for police-centered crime control.

You may follow the event online via Zoom Meetings at the following link: https://unibocconi-it.zoom.us/j/93537893727?pwd=cm9lbEsyRFQwUXExc1NiRjN5dVh2dz09 - Meeting ID: 935 3789 3727 - Passcode: 327396