Economics of Crime Essay

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Pages: 13
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1. Executive Summary
Analysis of BCS data from the past 15 years appears to show a strong relationship with the number of police officers and the prison populations. This evidence suggests that an increase in the number of police officers and a continued increase in the prison population would be an effective way to lower the level of crime. This project also show how social interactions between people can effect crime levels in different ways in two similar cities, the result show how different polices would be require for each area as it is long term crime trend that are themselves effecting the current crime level.
2. Introduction
The aim of this project is to investigate how crime has decreased since the mid-1990s and if this fall was uniform across different areas of criminal activity, this is achieved through the use of BCS data. The next section of the project will develop the market model for crime and in the following section this model will be used to explain the trends shown in the BCS data. In addition to this crime levels in the cities of Croydon and Leicester will be compared in order to display differences in criminal offences that can only be explained by spatial variation.
3. Key Data Trends
Figure 1 shows the data from BCS (British Crime Survey) over the period of 1995 to 2010/11. The BCS is an interview based survey that asks people living in households in England and Wales about their experiences of crime in the past 12 months. The data from the BCS shows that the number of offences reported has in general been in decline. This decline was originally quite rapid but over time the rate at which crime decreased began to slow. Despite this decrease in the speed of crime reduction in the past 15 years the number of offences has only risen in three periods, this occurred in 2005/6, 2006/7 and 2008/9. Despite these slight and infrequent increases it is clear from the data that crime rates have fallen since the mid-1990s. However what figure 1 does not show is if this reduction in crime is universal for all areas of criminal activity or in just a few.
Figures 2,3,4,5 and 6 all show data from specific areas of criminal activity. Figure 2 shows the number of offensives that correspond to vehicle related crimes. The data in this figure shows that over the past 15 years vehicle related crimes have fallen consistently, this decline strongly resembles that of the overall crime level. A similar pattern of decline can also be witness in the number of violent crimes reported (as seen in figure 3). Much like vehicle related crimes the initial drop in the level of violent crimes was far greater than the later decreases.

Figure 4 below shows the level of burglaries that where recorded by the BCS over the same time period. As with the previous sets of data this crime data shows downward trends however the decline witness in these graphs is somewhat different than that seen in the overall crime level. Burglaries fell extremely rapidly, with the number of cases being reported falling to below half its 1995 peak level by 2004/5. The level of burglaries reported in the BCS after this time frame however remained at a near consistent level, with the only noteworthy decrease being in 2009/10. This stagnation in the number of burglaries could help explain why the overall crime level fell so quickly in the late 1990s and then at a slower rate in the 2000s.

The last two graphs concerned with this BCS data are figure 5 and figure 6. Figure 5 displays the number of incidents of vandalism that were recorded in the BCS over the last 15 years while Figure 6 show the number of times an object from stolen from someone while it was on their person. These two graphs are particularly interesting as they do not seem to follow the same trends as the other graphs. Figure 5 shows two very distinct peaks, the first in 1995 and the second in 2006/7. These peaks are absent from any
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