More Cops, Less Crime

Alex Tabarrok writes:

Marginal Revolution: More Police, Less Crime: Crime in Washington DC falls significantly during high terror-alert periods when the police double up on shifts much as they do during a crime emergency. More generally, when one combines estimates of police effectiveness that come from myself and Klick, Steve Levitt, Bill Evans and Emily Owens and others with data on the costs of hiring police, it's clear that police are a bargain. We could double the number of police in the United States and the costs of crime would fall by substantially more than the cost of police. (Reallocating police and prison space from drug users to violent criminals would also help.)