Community Monitoring and Crime: Evidence from Chicago's Safe Passage Program
60 Pages Posted: 12 Jun 2020
Date Written: May 5, 2020
Abstract
This paper investigates the effect of community-based monitoring on crime in the context of a school safety initiative that employed community members to monitor city blocks during students' travel to and from school. Although we find that total crime decreased by 17% relative to neighboring non-treated blocks, these main effects are not the complete story. We find evidence of treatment spillovers in blocks closest to treated areas, but we also uncover cross-crime substitution within treated blocks, intertemporal reallocation of crime to non-monitored periods, and spatial displacement of crime into areas farther away from treated blocks.
Keywords: community monitoring, crime, deterrence, crime spillovers, Safe Passage
JEL Classification: K42, D70, H44
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation