| Chapter 1: Spatial Tests for Racial Bias in the NYPD's Stop, Question & Frisk Program.;This paper introduces a model that allows investigators to determine whether police officers exhibit taste based racial bias when selecting suspects for interdiction, as well as whether suspect responses to police interdiction vary by race. Using data provided by the New York Police Department I estimate that African-American suspects are less likely than their white counterparts to be found in possession of contraband when searched by police. This finding is robust to alternative modeling assumptions and is consistent with racially biased policing within my model.;Chapter 2: A Hedonic Analysis of Stop & Frisk's Amenity Value.;This paper measures the value households place on street-level intensive policing practices. It utilizes a large, spatially detailed data set that includes more than one hundred thousand real property sales and four million police-citizen encounters in New York City from 2006-2012. A hedonic analysis of this data shows that the New York Police Department's practice of Stop, Question & Frisk policing was likely seen as a neighborhood disamenity by home buyers. Using finely partitioned geographical areas to control for variation in omitted variables and spatial statistics to precisely describe location relative to surrounding amenities and disamenities, I find that properties exposed to more intense Stop & Frisk activity sold for significantly lower prices.;Chapter 3: Evaluating the Economic Impact of Proposition 47.;Proposition 47 was a California ballot initiative that reclassifies many felony crimes as misdemeanors if they are non-serious, non-sexual, and non-violent. Passed by voters in November, 2014, the law immediately caused the retroactive release of more than 3,000 prisoners who had been convicted of felonies that would be misdemeanors under the new law. This chapter offers evidence related to the costs and benefits associated with the release of these prisoners, as well as the diversion of an expected 40,000 more offenders each year who will no longer face felony charges. Preliminary estimates reveal the economic benefits outweigh the costs nearly 3-to-1. |
