Revisiting the Effect of Rapid Response on the Frequency of Reported Crimes Using an Instrumental Variable Approach

Abstract

Rapid response to emergency calls for service is among the most widely adopted crime prevention strategies used by police today while practitioners, policy makers, and researchers differ on its crime prevention efficacy. Using observational research designs to examine the relationship between rapid response and crime can give the appearance that faster response times lead to more crime because larger law enforcement agencies often allocate greater patrol resources to areas with greater crime counts. An instrumental variable approach is one research design solution to this research problem. Using a pair of instruments based on characteristics of beat boundaries and counts of adjoining beats, we find average response times are unrelated to the frequency of reported violent crimes. However, we also find that quicker rapid response is tied to fewer reported property crimes, specifically burglaries and motor vehicle thefts, with additional findings suggesting incapacitation is the mechanism behind the differences.