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The Economics of Policing

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Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

Abstract

Policing in the USA is highly decentralized. Variation in the jurisdictional and organizational structure of policing agencies can theoretically lead to different decisions about how these groups should balance community demands for public safety with concerns about fairness and trust in the mechanisms through which that public safety is achieved. This chapter outlines an economic framework for thinking about this tradeoff, highlighting links to law, psychology, and criminological theories of optimal policing. Research in the economics of crime in particular has made substantial progress in identifying the extent to which police funding can lead to crime reductions. There is also a growing body of economic evidence evaluating the impact of certain policing practices on crime. Economists have made important contributions to measuring the extent to which police may or may not be using their enforcement power in a way that is inconsistent with racial equity or legitimacy. In contrast, there is relatively little economic research on which policy interventions or organizational changes can increase perceptions of legitimacy and reduce racial bias in police actions. This imbalance in the quantity of high quality empirical evidence on the benefits and costs of law enforcement currently complicates efforts to identify socially optimal policing policies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminology, Law and Society, Department of Economics, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Emily Owens

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  1. Emily Owens
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Correspondence to Emily Owens .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. UNU-MERIT & Princeton University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Klaus F. Zimmermann

Section Editor information

  1. Department of Public Administration and Policy Department of Public Administration and Policy, American University, Washington, DC, USA

    Dave Marcotte

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Owens, E. (2020). The Economics of Policing. In: Zimmermann, K. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_146-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_146-1

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