What do police do and where do they do it?

Abstract

Recent research in the economics of policing has been concerned with what the police do and how much time they spend on those activities. Some of this research has highlighted that, based on the number of incidents, “crime” comprises only ∼ 20% of the police workload with much of the remaining 80% addressing public safety concerns. In this article, we deconstruct the nature of police incidents within a suburban city. We show that police expenditures, relative to the entire municipal budget, have been relatively constant over 30 years and that the volume of police activity has also remained relatively constant, although with a slight increasing trend. We show that the most of the decrease in crime can be attributed to population growth in this suburban city and that the places in which the police undertake different activities vary.