Community Policing Grants
COPS Grants Were a Modest Contributor to Declines in Crime in the 1990s Gao ID: GAO-06-104 October 14, 2005Between 1994 and 2001, the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) provided more than $7.6 billion in grants to state and local communities to hire police officers and promote community policing as an effective strategy to prevent crime. Studies of the impact of the grants on crime have been inconclusive. GAO was asked to evaluate the effect of the COPS program on the decline in crime during the 1990s. GAO developed and analyzed a database containing annual observations on crime, police officers, COPS funds, and other factors related to crime, covering years prior to and during the COPS program, or from 1990 through 2001. GAO analyzed survey data on policing practices that agencies reportedly implemented and reviewed studies of policing practices. GAO assessed: (1) how COPS obligations were distributed and how much was spent; (2) the extent to which COPS expenditures contributed to increases in the number of police officers and declines in crime nationwide; and (3) the extent to which COPS grants during the 1990s were associated with policing practices that crime literature indicates could be effective. In commenting on a draft of this report, the COPS Office said that our findings are important and support conclusions reached by others.
About half of the COPS funds distributed from 1994 through 2001 went to law enforcement agencies in localities of fewer than 150,000 persons and the remainder to agencies in larger communities. This distribution roughly corresponded to the distribution of major property crimes but less so to the distribution of violent crimes. For example, agencies in larger communities received about 47 percent of COPS funds but accounted for 58 percent of the violent crimes nationwide. From 1994 through 2001, COPS expenditures constituted about 1 percent of total local expenditures for police services. For the years 1994 through 2001, expenditures of COPS grants by grant recipients resulted in varying amounts of additional officers above the levels that would have been expected without the expenditures. For example, during 2000, the peak year of COPS expenditures by grant recipients, they led to an increase of about 3 percent in the level of sworn officers--or about 17,000 officers. Adding up the number of additional officers in each year from 1994 through 2001, GAO estimated that COPS expenditures yielded about 88,000 additional officer-years. GAO obtained its results from fixed-effects regression models that controlled for pre-1994 trends in the growth rate of officers, other federal expenditures, and local- and state-level factors that could affect officer levels. From its analysis of the effects of increases in officers on declines in crime, GAO estimated that COPS funds contributed to declines in the crime rate that, while modest in size, varied over time and among categories of crime. For example, between 1993 and 2000, COPS funds contributed to a 1.3 percent decline in the overall crime rate and a 2.5 percent decline in the violent crime rate from the 1993 levels. The effects of COPS funds on crime held when GAO controlled for other crime-related factors--such as local economic conditions and state-level policy changes--in its regression models, and the effects were commensurate with COPS funds' contribution to local spending on police protection. Factors other than COPS funds accounted for the majority of the decline in crime during this period. For example, between 1993 and 2000, the overall crime rate declined by 26 percent, and the 1.3 percent decline due to COPS, amounted to about 5 percent of the overall decline. Similarly, COPS contributed about 7 percent of the 32 percent decline in violent crime from 1993 to 2000. From 1993 though 1997, agencies that received and spent COPS grants reported larger changes in policing practices and in the subsets of practices that focus on solving crime problems or focus on places where crime is concentrated than did agencies that did not receive the grants. The differences held after GAO controlled for underlying trends in the reported use of these policing practices. From 1996 to 2000, there was no overall increase in policing practices associated with COPS grants. In its review of studies on policing practices, GAO found that problem-solving and place-oriented practices can be effective in reducing crime.
GAO-06-104, Community Policing Grants: COPS Grants Were a Modest Contributor to Declines in Crime in the 1990s
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Report to the Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary, House of
Representatives:
United States Government Accountability Office:
GAO:
October 2005:
Community Policing Grants:
COPS Grants Were a Modest Contributor to Declines in Crime in the
1990s:
GAO-06-104:
GAO Highlights:
Highlights of GAO-06-104, a report to the Chairman, Committee on the
Judiciary, House of Representatives:
Why GAO Did This Study:
Between 1994 and 2001, the Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services (COPS) provided more than $7.6 billion in grants to state and
local communities to hire police officers and promote community
policing as an effective strategy to prevent crime. Studies of the
impact of the grants on crime have been inconclusive.
GAO was asked to evaluate the effect of the COPS program on the decline
in crime during the 1990s. GAO developed and analyzed a database
containing annual observations on crime, police officers, COPS funds,
and other factors related to crime, covering years prior to and during
the COPS program, or from 1990 through 2001. GAO analyzed survey data
on policing practices that agencies reportedly implemented and reviewed
studies of policing practices. GAO assessed: (1) how COPS obligations
were distributed and how much was spent; (2) the extent to which COPS
expenditures contributed to increases in the number of police officers
and declines in crime nationwide; and (3) the extent to which COPS
grants during the 1990s were associated with policing practices that
crime literature indicates could be effective.
In commenting on a draft of this report, the COPS Office said that our
findings are important and support conclusions reached by others.
What GAO Found:
About half of the COPS funds distributed from 1994 through 2001 went to
law enforcement agencies in localities of fewer than 150,000 persons
and the remainder to agencies in larger communities. This distribution
roughly corresponded to the distribution of major property crimes but
less so to the distribution of violent crimes. For example, agencies in
larger communities received about 47 percent of COPS funds but
accounted for 58 percent of the violent crimes nationwide. From 1994
through 2001, COPS expenditures constituted about 1 percent of total
local expenditures for police services.
For the years 1994 through 2001, expenditures of COPS grants by grant
recipients resulted in varying amounts of additional officers above the
levels that would have been expected without the expenditures. For
example, during 2000, the peak year of COPS expenditures by grant
recipients, they led to an increase of about 3 percent in the level of
sworn officers”or about 17,000 officers. Adding up the number of
additional officers in each year from 1994 through 2001, GAO estimated
that COPS expenditures yielded about 88,000 additional officer-years.
GAO obtained its results from fixed-effects regression models that
controlled for pre-1994 trends in the growth rate of officers, other
federal expenditures, and local- and state-level factors that could
affect officer levels.
From its analysis of the effects of increases in officers on declines
in crime, GAO estimated that COPS funds contributed to declines in the
crime rate that, while modest in size, varied over time and among
categories of crime. For example, between 1993 and 2000, COPS funds
contributed to a 1.3 percent decline in the overall crime rate and a
2.5 percent decline in the violent crime rate from the 1993 levels. The
effects of COPS funds on crime held when GAO controlled for other crime-
related factors”such as local economic conditions and state-level
policy changes”in its regression models, and the effects were
commensurate with COPS funds‘ contribution to local spending on police
protection. Factors other than COPS funds accounted for the majority of
the decline in crime during this period. For example, between 1993 and
2000, the overall crime rate declined by 26 percent, and the 1.3
percent decline due to COPS, amounted to about 5 percent of the overall
decline. Similarly, COPS contributed about 7 percent of the 32 percent
decline in violent crime from 1993 to 2000.
From 1993 though 1997, agencies that received and spent COPS grants
reported larger changes in policing practices and in the subsets of
practices that focus on solving crime problems or focus on places where
crime is concentrated than did agencies that did not receive the
grants. The differences held after GAO controlled for underlying trends
in the reported use of these policing practices. From 1996 to 2000,
there was no overall increase in policing practices associated with
COPS grants. In its review of studies on policing practices, GAO found
that problem-solving and place-oriented practices can be effective in
reducing crime.
www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-104.
To view the full product, including the scope and methodology, click on
the link above. For more information, contact Laurie Ekstrand at (202)
512-8777 or ekstrandl@gao.gov.
[End of section]
Contents:
Letter:
Background:
Results:
Concluding Observations:
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology:
Appendix II: Background on the COPS Program and Studies of the Impacts
of COPS Grants on Crime:
Appendix III: COPS Grant Obligation and Expenditure Patterns:
Appendix IV: COPS Expenditures Led to Increases in Sworn Officers and
Declines in Crime:
Appendix V: COPS Expenditures Associated with Policing Practices That
Crime Literature Indicates Are Effective in Preventing Crime:
Appendix VI: Methods Used to Estimate the Effects of COPS Funds on
Officers and Crime:
Appendix VII: Methods Used to Assess Policing Practices:
Appendix VIII: Comments from the Department of Justice:
Appendix IX: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments:
Bibliography:
Tables:
Table 1: Index of Crimes, 2002, as Reported by the FBI, Excluding
Arson:
Table 2: COPS Obligations, 1994 through 2001, by COPS Grant Categories
and Types of Grant Programs:
Table 3: Law Enforcement Agencies Reporting to the UCR and in Our
Analysis Dataset:
Table 4: COPS Grant Obligations 1994-2001, by COPS Grant Program:
Table 5: Percentage Distribution of COPS Obligations and Crime from
1994 through 2001, by Population Size Group:
Table 6: Per Crime COPS Obligations, by Population Size Group and
Category of Crime, 1994 through 2001:
Table 7: Number of Agencies That Received at Least One COPS Grant
Obligation, 1994-2001, by COPS Grant Program, and Year of First COPS
Obligation:
Table 8: Percentage of Agencies in GAO's Primary Analysis Sample That
Received at Least One COPS Grant Obligation from 1994 through 2001, by
Size of Population Served by Agencies:
Table 9: Estimated Effect of COPS Expenditures on the Number of Sworn
Officers Nationwide in Each Year, 1994-2001:
Table 10: Estimated Percentage Change in Crime Rates from 1993 Levels
Due to COPS Expenditures, 1994-2001, by Crime Type Category:
Table 11: Mean Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997, by
Category of Policing Practices and whether Agencies Received a COPS
Grant between 1994 and 1997:
Table 12: Mean Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997, by Size
of Agency and whether Agencies Received a COPS Grant between 1994 and
1997:
Table 13: Difference in Mean Levels of Reported Policing Practices in
1996 and 2000, by Category of Policing Practices and Timing of COPS
Grant Expenditures:
Table 14: Alternate Specifications of the Relationship between COPS
Expenditures and Crime:
Table 15: Means and Standard Deviations of Variables Used in Regression
Models:
Table 16: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Officers Per Capita
on COPS Hiring Grant Expenditures and Other Outside Funds (Standard
Errors in Parentheses):
Table 17: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Crime Rates on COPS
Hiring Grant Expenditures and Other Outside Funds (Standard Errors in
Parentheses):
Table 18: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Index Crime Rates and
Officers Per Capita on COPS Hiring Grant Expenditures and Other Outside
Funds, by Population Size Category (Standard Errors in Parentheses):
Table 19: Elasticities of the Impact of Police Officers on the Crime
Rate:
Table 20: Elasticity of Violent and Property Crime with Respect to
Officers under Alternate Specifications of the Relationship between
COPS Expenditures and Crime:
Table 21: Estimated Per Capita Effect of COPS Expenditures on the
Number of Officers:
Table 22: Estimated Per Capita Growth of COPS Expenditures on Police
Officers and Crime from 1993:
Table 23: Categories of Policing Practices and Specific Items within
Each Category in the Policing Strategies Survey:
Table 24: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Changes in Mean
Number of Policing Practices and Category of Practices between 1993 and
1997 on whether or Not Agencies Received COPS grant between 1994 and
1997 and on Per Capita COPS Expenditures between 1994 and 1997
(Standard Errors in Parentheses):
Table 25: Categories of Policing Practices and Specific Items within
Each Category in the National Evaluation of COPS Survey:
Table 26: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Changes in Mean
Number of Policing Practices and Category of Practices between 1996 and
2000 on Whether or Not Agencies Received COPS grant Between 1997 and
2000 and on Per Capita COPS Expenditures between 1994-1996 and 1997-
2000 (Standard Errors in Parentheses):
Figures:
Figure 1: Total, Violent, and Property Crime Rates per 100,000 Persons,
as Reported in the Uniform Crime Reports, 1970-2001:
Figure 2: Estimated Effects of COPS Grant Expenditures on the Number of
Sworn Officers, 1991-2001:
Figure 3: Annual Percentage Changes in the Violent Crime Rate from
1993: Total Change and Estimated Change Due to COPS Grants:
Figure 4: Reported Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997 in
Agencies That Did and Did Not Receive COPS Grants, by Category of
Policing Practice:
Figure 5: Violent Crimes and Violent Crimes Reported to the Police, as
Reported in the National Criminal Victimization Survey and Including
Homicides from the Uniform Crime Reports, 1990-2001:
Figure 6: Total Index, Violent, and Property Crime Rates per 100,000
Persons, 1990-2001:
Figure 7: Annual Expenditures of COPS Grant Funds, by Year:
Figure 8: Number of Agencies That Spent COPS Funds, 1994 through 2001:
Figure 9: Reported Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997 in
Agencies That Received and Did Not Receive COPS Grants, by Size of
Population Served:
Abbreviations:
AHEAD: Accelerated Hiring, Education, and Deployment:
BJA: Bureau of Justice Assistance:
BJS: Bureau of Justice Statistics:
COPS: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services:
DLEA: Directory of Law Enforcement Agency:
DOJ: Department of Justice:
FAST: Funding Accelerated for Smaller Towns:
FBI: Federal Bureau of Investigation:
FIPS: Federal Information Processing Standards:
LLEBG: Local Law Enforcement Block Grants:
MORE: Making Officer Redeployment Effective:
NCHS: National Center for Health Statistics:
NVCS: National Crime Victimization Survey:
OJP: Office of Justice Programs:
ORI: originating agency identifier:
UCR: Uniform Crime Reporting:
UHP: Universal Hiring Program:
VCCLEA: Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994:
United States Government Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
October 14, 2005:
The Honorable F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr.:
Chairman:
Committee on the Judiciary:
House of Representatives:
Dear Mr. Chairman:
Provisions of the Public Safety Partnership and Community Policing Act
of 1994, Title 1 of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act
of 1994 (VCCLEA), authorized appropriations of $8.8 billion for fiscal
years 1995 through 2000 for grants to states and local communities to
increase the hiring and deployment of community police officers and to
promote nationwide the concept of community policing--an approach to
policing that involves the cooperation of law enforcement and community
residents in identifying and developing solutions to crime problems--as
an effective strategy to improve public safety.[Footnote 1] To
administer the grants, in October 1994, the Attorney General created
the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).
According to its Director, the COPS Office was responsible for "one of
the greatest infusions of resources into local law enforcement in our
nation's history,"[Footnote 2] and in a report to Congress the former
Attorney General linked increases in COPS-funded officers to declines
in crime. By the summer of 2000, the former Attorney General reported,
the COPS Office had awarded more than $7.6 billion in grants to more
than 12,000 local law enforcement agencies--primarily municipal, state,
and county police and sheriff's departments whose officers have general
arrest powers--and funded over 105,000 community policing officers. The
report claimed that the funded officers led to an increase in the
number of police officers that was well above what would have been
expected in the absence of the passage of VCCLEA, and it cited research
that showed that increased police presence led to reductions in crime.
As evidence that these officers led to reductions in crime, the report
showed that the average number of violent crimes per police department
declined as the number of COPS-funded officers increased.
A study funded by the COPS Office and released in 2001, which attempted
to control for some of the other factors that could influence crime
rates and also be correlated with the distribution of COPS funds,
concluded that COPS grants contributed to the reduction in crime in the
1990s.[Footnote 3] You previously asked us to review this study, and we
reported that its methodological limitations were such that the study's
results should be viewed as inconclusive.[Footnote 4]
In response to our assessment of the results of the study that we
reviewed, you asked us to undertake an independent evaluation of the
impact of COPS grants on the decline in crime that occurred during the
1990s. This report provides results from our evaluation of interrelated
questions about COPS funds, officers, crime, and policing practices.
Specifically, regarding COPS funds: (1) From 1994 through 2001, how
were COPS obligations distributed among local law enforcement agencies
in relation to the populations they served and crimes in their
jurisdictions, and how much of the obligated amounts did agencies
spend? Regarding officers and crime: (2) To what extent did COPS grants
contribute to increases in the number of sworn officers and declines in
crime in the nation during the 1990s? Regarding policing practices: (3)
To what extent were COPS grants during the 1990s associated with police
departments adopting policing practices that the crime literature
indicates could contribute to reductions in crime?
To address our reporting objectives, we created and analyzed a database
consisting of 12 years of data on local law enforcement agencies for
the years 1990 through 2001. We included data from the Department of
Justice's (DOJ) Office of Justice Programs (OJP) on federal law
enforcement grant obligations and expenditures (including COPS grants);
the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting
(UCR) Program on crime and sworn officers; the Department of Commerce's
Bureau of Economic Analysis on local economic conditions such as
employment rates and per capita income; and the National Center for
Health Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau's estimates of demographic
characteristics of local populations--such as their age, race, and
gender composition. The UCR crime data that we used are data on crimes
reported to or known by the police and reported to the UCR Program. The
crimes in the UCR are based on the FBI's crime index. The index crimes
include the violent crimes of murder and non-negligent manslaughter,
forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault as well as the property
crimes of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The
FBI reports that there is limited reporting of arson offenses to the
UCR Program by law enforcement agencies. We therefore excluded arson
crimes from our analysis.[Footnote 5]
Prior to developing and using the database to address our objectives,
we assessed the reliability of each data source, and in preparing this
report, we used only the data that we found to be sufficiently reliable
for the purposes of our report. We also assessed possible biases in our
estimates of the effects of COPS funds on crime arising from our use of
UCR data on reported crimes. We concluded from our analysis that our
estimates of the impacts of COPS funds are likely to understate the
effect of COPS funds on crime. (See app. I for a more detailed
discussion of our approach, methods, and database construction.)
To describe how COPS grant funds were distributed and spent, we
analyzed data on COPS obligations to and expenditures by local law
enforcement agencies, comparing them with several characteristics of
the agencies that received COPS funds, such as population size and
crime levels.
To assess the possible relationships between COPS expenditures and
changes in the number of officers and rates of crime, we analyzed data
on the agencies that reported complete crime and officer data for at
least 1 year from 1990 through 2001 using a two-stage regression model
of these relationships. In the first stage, we estimated the
relationship between the variation in the timing and amount of
agencies' expenditures on COPS grants that were for hiring officers and
changes in the number of officers. In the second stage, we estimated
the relationship between changes in COPS expenditures and changes in
crime rates using fixed-effects regression models. We used the results
from these two sets of regressions to calculate the amount of the
change in crime (from the second stage) due to changes in officers
(from the first stage). As the relationship between officer levels and
crime rates may reflect a complex causal relationship, we used COPS
hiring grants as a statistical instrument to help to identify the
relationship between officers and crime. In both sets of regression
models, we used agency and year fixed effects to control for unobserved
sources of variation among agencies (within a given year) and within
agencies (over time). We also included variables to measure agencies'
pre-1994 trends in the growth of crime rates and officers. These
controls allowed us to compare agencies that had similar, pre-COPS
trends in these variables, thereby reducing further the differences
among agencies that are not due to COPS expenditures. To control for
economic factors that may be related to crime--such as employment and
income--we included measures of local economic conditions, and to
control for changes in the composition of local populations that could
be correlated with crime, we included measures of age and race
composition of local populations. Finally, to control for changes in
state-level practices that could affect crime rates, such as changes in
state incarceration rates or state sentencing policy, we included state-
by-year fixed effects in our regression models. (See app. VI for
additional details about our regression models.)
To address the relationship between COPS grants and changes in policing
practices, we analyzed data from two surveys of nationally
representative samples of local law enforcement agencies on policing
practices that they reportedly implemented in various years from 1993
to 2000. The first survey--the Policing Strategies Survey--was
administered in 1993 and 1997 to provide information on the development
and implementation of community policing.[Footnote 6] The second
survey--the National Evaluation of COPS Survey--was administered in
1996 and 2000.[Footnote 7] We identified and analyzed practices that
are associated with problem-solving, place-oriented approaches to
policing, community collaboration efforts, and the use of crime
analysis. We assessed changes in the levels of reported practices
between agencies that spent COPS grants over particular periods with
those that did not receive or spend COPS grant funds. To control for
the underlying trends in reported policing practices, we estimated
fixed-effects regression models of the effects of COPS grants
expenditures on changes in reported policing practices. To assess the
possible relationship between policing practices and crime, we analyzed
systematic reviews of the effectiveness of policing practices in
reducing crime to identify the types of policing practices that have
been judged to be effective in preventing crime. (See app. VII for
details about the surveys and our analytic methods.)
In addition, we reviewed relevant economic and criminological
literatures that addressed issues related to estimating models of the
effects of federal grant funds on crime rates. We spoke with officials
at the Department of Justice about the operation of the COPS program,
and we also spoke with researchers about our approach and methods. We
reviewed our approach and methods with a group of experts in the field
of policing and crime. The group consisted of criminologists,
economists, statisticians, and criminal justice practitioners, and was
convened for us by the National Research Council of the National
Academies to enable participants to offer their individual views as
experts in the field.
We conducted our work between January 2004 and August 2005 in
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Background:
Established in October 1994 by the Attorney General to implement the
administration of community policing grants under VCCLEA, the Office of
Community Oriented Policing Services announced it first grant programs
in 1994. Prior to its establishment, in December 1993 the Department of
Justice awarded community policing grants to hire officers under the
Police Hiring Supplement.[Footnote 8]
The COPS Office distributed grants in a variety of program funding
categories. Hiring grants, which required agencies to hire new officers
and at the same time to indicate the types of community policing
strategies that they intended to implement with the grants, was the
largest COPS grant program category in terms of the amounts of grant
funds obligated.[Footnote 9] The hiring grants paid a maximum of
$75,000 per officer over a 3-year period (or at most 75 percent of an
officer's salary) and generally required that local agencies cover the
remaining salary and benefits with state or local funds. From 1994
through 2001, more than $4.8 billion in COPS obligations (or about 64
percent of COPS obligations over this period) were in the form of
hiring grants. The Making Officer Redeployment Effective (MORE) grant
program, which provided funds to law enforcement agencies to purchase
equipment, hire civilians, and redeploy existing officers to community
policing was the second largest COPS grant program, obligating more
than $1.2 billion. Additional COPS grant programs provided funds for
specific innovations in policing and for a variety of other purposes.
Each year the COPS Office was required to distribute half of the grant
funds to agencies in communities whose populations exceeded 150,000
persons and half of the grant funds to agencies in communities with
populations of 150,000 or fewer persons.[Footnote 10]
In the applications for hiring grants, the COPS Office requested
agencies to indicate the types of community policing practices that
they planned to implement with their grants. The various practices
related to community policing included practices such as identifying
crime problems by looking at records of crime trends and analyzing
repeat calls for service, working with other public agencies to solve
disorder problems, locating offices or stations within neighborhoods,
and collaborating with community residents by increasing officer
contact with citizens and improving citizen feedback. These types of
policing practices also corresponded with general approaches to
policing. For example, problem-solving policing practices may rely on
crime analysis tools to help to identify crime problems and develop
solutions to them. Place-oriented practices attempt to identify
locations where crime occurs repeatedly and to implement procedures to
disrupt these recurrences of crime. By collaborating with community
residents, agencies attempt to improve citizen feedback about crime
problems and effectiveness of policing to address these problems.
In 2000, DOJ reported that COPS-funded officers helped to reduce crime
and reported that the drop in crime that occurred after 1994 was more
than what would have been expected in the absence of the passage of
VCCLEA and the creation of the COPS Office.[Footnote 11] The report
suggested that COPS had achieved its goal of funding 100,000 officers,
and through increases in officers and the practice of community
policing, the COPS program was credited with reducing crime. However,
while COPS may have funded 100,000 officers, it was not apparent that
the funded officers had resulted in new officers having been hired.
Researchers at the Urban Institute reported in 2000, for example, their
estimates that by 2003, the COPS program would have raised the level of
police on the street by the equivalent of 62,700 to 83,900 full-time
equivalent officers.[Footnote 12] They also indicated that it was
unclear whether the program would ever increase the number of officers
on the street at a single time by 100,000.[Footnote 13]
The COPS Office-funded study of the effect of COPS grants on crime in
over 6,000 communities from 1995 through 1999 that had received COPS
grants concluded that COPS grants were effective in reducing
crime.[Footnote 14] The study also reported that COPS grants that
encouraged agencies to implement a variety of innovative strategies to
improve public safety had larger impacts on reducing violent and
property crime than did other COPS grant types.[Footnote 15] However, a
study released by the Heritage Foundation, which was based upon an
analysis of county-level data, was unable to replicate the findings of
the COPS Office-funded study.[Footnote 16] Specifically, the Heritage
study found no effect of COPS hiring grants on crime rates, but it did
find that the COPS grants for specific problems--such as gangs,
domestic violence, and illegal use of firearms by youth--were
associated with reductions in crime. In addition, we questioned whether
the sizes of the effects of COPS grants on crime that were reported in
the COPS Office-funded study were large enough to be significant in a
practical sense and whether they could accurately represent the
expected returns on the investment of billions of dollars.[Footnote 17]
Assessing the contribution of COPS funds to the decline in crime during
the 1990s presents challenges for evaluators. Nationwide, crime rates
began to decline in about 1991, before the COPS program announced its
first grant programs in 1994 (fig. 1). Hence the factors other than
COPS grants that were responsible for precipitating the decline in
crime could have continued to influence its decline throughout the
1990s. Researchers have pointed to a number of factors that could have
precipitated the decline in crime, including increased use of prison as
a punishment for violent crimes, improved economic conditions, and the
subsiding of violence that accompanied the expansion of drug markets.
To the extent that any of these factors are correlated with the
distribution of COPS grants, they could be responsible for impacts that
have been attributed to COPS grants.
Figure 1: Total, Violent, and Property Crime Rates per 100,000 Persons,
as Reported in the Uniform Crime Reports, 1970-2001:
[See PDF for image]
[End of figure]
Prior studies of the impact of COPS grants on crime have correlated
COPS funds with crime rates, controlling for other factors that could
influence crime rates. The authors of the prior studies describe
various mechanisms by which COPS grants may affect crime, but their
statistical models do not explicitly take these mechanisms into account
in estimating the effects of the grants. By identifying and explicitly
modeling mechanisms through which COPS funds could affect crimes--such
as increasing the number of sworn officers on the street who are
available for patrolling places or contributing to changes in policing
practices that may be effective in preventing crime--the possibility of
a spurious relationship between inputs (such as COPS funds) and
outcomes (such as crime) can be minimized. (For additional background
information, see app. II.)
Results:
Our analysis showed that from 1994 through 2001, COPS obligated more
than $7.32 billion to 10,680 agencies for which we were able to link
Office of Justice Programs financial data on COPS obligations to the
records of law enforcement agencies.[Footnote 18] About $4.7 billion
(or 64 percent) of these obligations were in the form of hiring grants.
About half of these funds went to agencies serving populations of
150,000 or fewer persons and about half was distributed to agencies
serving populations of more than 150,000 persons. This distribution
roughly corresponds to the distribution of index crimes across the two
size categories of jurisdictions. However, in relation to violent
crimes, the share of COPS funds distributed to larger jurisdictions was
smaller than the share of violent crimes that they contributed to the
national total. For example, agencies serving populations of more than
150,000 persons contributed about 58 percent of all violent crimes
reported to the UCR during this time period while receiving about half
of all COPS funds. To be specific, the smallest agencies--those serving
populations of fewer than 10,000 persons--received an average of $1,573
per violent crime reported to UCR. Agencies serving populations of more
than 150,000 persons received about $418 in COPS funds per violent
crime.
By the end of 2001, the COPS grantee agencies in our sample had spent
about $5 billion (or 68 percent of the $7.3 billion obligated to them)
from 1994 through 2001. Annually, the total amount of COPS expenditures
made by grantees increased each year from 1994 until 2000, and then
declined, while the number of agencies that drew down COPS funds peaked
in 1998 at about 7,600 and declined to about 6,000 in 2001. From 1994
through 2001, a total of about 10,300 agencies spent COPS funds. The
maximum number of agencies spending funds in any given year occurred
during 1998, when about 7,600 agencies spent funds. From 1998 through
2000, the amount of COPS expenditures per person in the jurisdiction
served by an agency increased from about $4 to about $4.80. COPS
expenditures amounted to an annual average of about 1 percent of total
expenditures for police services by local law enforcement agencies from
1994 through 2001. This contribution varied by year. For example, in
1999 and 2000, COPS expenditures were about 1.5 percent of total local
police expenditures. (See app. III for a further discussion of COPS
obligations and expenditures.)
For the years 1994 through 2001, we infer from our estimates that COPS
hiring grant expenditures contributed to increases in sworn officer
levels above the levels that would have been expected without these
funds. The additional number of sworn officers stemming from these
funds varied over the years, and it increased from 1994 though 2000 and
declined in 2001 (fig. 2). For example, for 1997 we estimate that COPS
funds contributed about 14,000 additional officers in that year--or
about 2.4 percent of the total number of sworn officers nationwide--and
for 2000, COPS funds contributed about 17,000 additional officers--or
about 3 percent of the total number of sworn officers nationwide. For
all years from 1994 through 2001, we estimate that COPS expenditures
paid for a total of about 88,000 additional officer-years over this
entire period, where the total number of officer-years equals the sum
of the number of officers due to COPS grant expenditures in each year.
An officer-year refers to the number of officers in a given year that
we could attribute to COPS expenditures, and the additional officers in
a given year attributable to COPS expenditures represent a net addition
to the stock of sworn officers.[Footnote 19] Using the results from our
regression estimates of the effects of COPS expenditures on the level
of sworn officers, we set the values for COPS expenditures to zero to
predict the level of officers absent COPS funds. The difference between
this number and the actual number of sworn officers yields the number
of officers due to COPS expenditures. Our analysis also shows that
apart from the COPS hiring and COPS MORE grants, other COPS grant types
did not have a significant effect on officer strength. (See app. IV for
more detailed information about the results of our analysis of COPS
expenditures on officers.)
Figure 2: Estimated Effects of COPS Grant Expenditures on the Number of
Sworn Officers, 1991-2001:
[See PDF for image]
[End of figure]
We estimate that the COPS grant expenditures contributed to the
reduction in crime in the 1990s independently of other factors that we
were able to take into account in our analysis. Other factors that
could have contributed to the reduction in crimes in the 1990s that we
took into account included federal law enforcement expenditures other
than COPS grants, local economic conditions and changes in population
composition, and changes in state-level policies and practices that
could be correlated with crime, such as incarceration and sentencing
policy. Specifically, from our model of the effect of changes in sworn
officers on crime, we estimate that a 1 percent increase in the number
of sworn officers per capita would lead to a 0.4 percent reduction in
the total number of index crimes. Through their effects on changes in
officers in a given year, COPS expenditures led to varying amounts of
declines in crime rates over the years from 1994 through 2001. For
example, the 2.4 percent increase in sworn officers due to COPS
expenditures in 1997 was responsible for about a 1.1 percent decline in
the total index crime rate from 1993 to 1997, while the roughly 3
percent increase in officers due to COPS expenditures in 2000 was
responsible for about 1.3 percent decline in the total index crime rate
from 1993 to 2000. Put into another context, the total crime rate
declined from 5,904 per 100,000 persons in 1993 to 4,367 per 100,000
persons in 2000, or by about 26 percent. Of this 26 percent drop, we
attribute about 5 percent to the effect of COPS. From our analysis of
violent crimes, we estimated that declines in the violent crime rate
due to COPS expenditures also varied with the level of officers due to
COPS funds. The declines in violent crime rates attributable to COPS
increased from about 2 percent in 1997 to 2.5 percent in 2000, where
both of the amounts of decline attributable to COPS expenditures are
based upon comparisons with the 1993 violent crime rate (fig. 3). We
further estimate that at its peak in 1998, COPS accounted for about a
1.2 percent decline in the property crime rate.
Figure 3: Annual Percentage Changes in the Violent Crime Rate from
1993: Total Change and Estimated Change Due to COPS Grants:
[See PDF for image]
[End of figure]
Our estimates of the impacts of COPS expenditures on the broad
categories of crime are supported by our findings from our crime-type-
specific regression models. We find significant reductions due to COPS
expenditures for the crimes of murder and non-negligent manslaughter,
robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. Our
analysis of larceny indicates that while the relationship between COPS
funds and larceny is a negative one, it is not statistically
significant, nor is the effect of COPS on rape statistically
significant. Further, we estimated the effects of COPS grants on the
total crime rate under various assumptions about lags between the
receipt of COPS grants and expenditures of COPS funds. The estimates
for the amount of the decline in the total crime rate that we report
here--for example, the 1.3 percent of the decline in crime from 1993 to
2000--are among the smallest effects that we estimated from our various
models. Under different assumptions about lags associated with COPS
expenditures, the amount attributable to COPS could be as high as 3.2
percent. Interestingly, the 1.3 percent decline in the index crime rate
that we attribute to COPS expenditures in 2000 is on the same order of
magnitude as the contribution of COPS expenditures to total local
spending on police. In 2000, for example, COPS expenditures accounted
for about 1.5 percent of total local police expenditures. We further
find that factors other than COPS expenditures account for the majority
of the decline in the crime rate. (See app. IV for more detailed
information about the results of our analysis of COPS expenditures on
crime.)
Our regression analysis of the Policing Strategies Survey data for 1993
and 1997 indicate that receipt of a COPS grant and the amount of per
capita COPS expenditures by agencies were associated with increases in
the agencies' reported use of problem-solving and place-oriented
policing practices but not crime analysis and community collaboration
policing practices (fig.4). According to our review studies of the
effectiveness of policing practices, problem-solving and place-
oriented practices are among those that the crime literature indicates
may be effective in reducing crime. With problem-solving practices,
police focus on specific problems and tailor their strategies to them.
Place-oriented practices include efforts to identify the locations
where crime repeatedly occurs and to implement procedures to disrupt
these recurrences of crime. Crime analysis includes the use of tools
such as geographic information systems to identify crime patterns.
Community collaboration includes attempts to improve or enhance citizen
feedback about crime problems and the effectiveness of policing efforts
to address them. In our regressions, we controlled for the underlying
trends in the reported adoption of policing practices, agency
characteristics, and local economic conditions.
Figure 4: Reported Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997 in
Agencies That Did and Did Not Receive COPS Grants, by Category of
Policing Practice:
[See PDF for image]
[End of figure]
Our analysis of the National Evaluation of COPS Survey--which measured
practices in 1996 and again in 2000--showed that while COPS grantee
agencies increased their reported use of all policing practices
combined, these changes were not statistically significant in
regressions that controlled for the underlying trends in the reported
adoption of policing practices, agency characteristics, and local
economic conditions. (See app. V for more detailed information about
the results of our analysis of COPS expenditures and policing
practices.)
Concluding Observations:
While we find that COPS expenditures led to increases in sworn police
officers above levels that would have been expected without these
expenditures and through the increases in sworn officers led to
declines in crime, we conclude that COPS grants were not the major
cause of the decline in crime from 1994 through 2001. Other factors--
which other researchers have attempted to sort out--combined to
contribute more to the reduction in crime than did COPS expenditures.
This is not surprising, as COPS expenditures--while a large federal
investment in local law enforcement--made a comparatively small
contribution to local law enforcement expenditures for policing.
Nevertheless, our analysis shows that COPS grant expenditures did
reduce crime during the 1990s. Our models isolate the effects of COPS
expenditures from the effects of other factors. We cannot identify
another variable that is correlated with changes in COPS expenditures,
officers, and crime rates in local communities that would explain away
our findings. Thus, we conclude that the results of our model are
sound. Further, our results do not address whether the COPS program met
its goals of putting 100,000 officers on the street--and the evidence
suggests that while it funded more than 100,000 officers, it may have
fallen short of achieving this goal. Still, through the increases in
officers that we attribute to COPS expenditures, we find that COPS
grants affected crime rates. Therefore, as a demonstration of whether a
federal program can affect crime through hiring officers and changing
policing practices, the evidence indicates that COPS contributed to
declines in crime above the levels of declines that would have been
expected without it.
Our work cannot identify an optimum number of officers needed by any
individual agency to maximize the effect of officers on reducing crime,
nor can it identify the specific types of practices that agencies
should adopt in particular settings. It is highly likely that there is
indeed a point where additional officers no longer affect crime. The
numbers of additional officers hired as a result of COPS were
relatively small compared with the sizes of individual police agencies,
and these small increases led to commensurate reductions in crime
rates. Given resource constraints and competing priorities at all
levels of government, it is probably unlikely that most police agencies
would have the resources available to hire large enough numbers of
officers to go past the point of diminishing returns.
Agency Comments and Our Evaluation:
We provided a draft of this report to the Attorney General for comment
on September 13, 2005. In its written comments, the Office of Community
Oriented Policing Services (COPS) drew upon information from both this
report and our prior correspondence on the effects of COPS grants on
crime. They said that we were careful and diligent in our research, and
that our findings support conclusions reached by others and correspond
with what local law enforcement leaders report. The COPS Office also
expanded upon some of our main findings, which they characterized
correctly. In their comments, the COPS Office introduced data and
opinions about potential effects of the COPS grants that were beyond
the scope of our work. We therefore cannot corroborate these
statements.
For example, in discussing our findings about the effects of COPS
grants on sworn officers, the COPS Office introduced data about
officers derived from the MORE technology grants and reports that
42,058 (or 36 percent) of the 118,397 officers that the COPS Office has
funded to date are derived from the MORE grants. Our work does not
corroborate either of these figures. We point out in Appendix VI that
our estimates of a total of 88,000 additional officer-years takes into
account the effects of MORE grant expenditures.
In their comments on our finding about changes in policing practices
that resulted from COPS, the COPS Office points out that the aggregate
counts of policing practices that we used in our analysis provide only
a superficial measure of the level of community policing taking place.
We acknowledged this point in appendix VII, but chose not to speculate
on the extent to which police departments increased the amount of
problem solving or other policing practices they engaged in. By
speculating that agencies may have increased the quantity of a specific
activity, the COPS Office provides only one view of what may have
happened. Another view, proffered by policing researchers, is that
there is little evidence to suggest that problem-solving policing was
implemented with sufficient rigor in enough departments to have
contributed to declines in violent crime during the 1990s. As they
point out, problem-solving activities may have increased, and they may
have contributed to declines in crime, "but we simply do not
know."[Footnote 20]
We are sending copies of this report to other interested congressional
committees and the Attorney General. We will also make copies available
to others upon request. In addition, the report will be available at no
charge on GAO's Web site at http://www.gao.gov.
If you or your staff have any questions concerning this report, please
contact Laurie Ekstrand at (202) 512-8777 or by e-mail at
Ekstrandl@gao.gov or Nancy Kingsbury at (202) 512-2700 or by e-mail at
Kingsburyn@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional
Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this
report. Key contributors to this report are listed in appendix IX.
Sincerely yours,
Signed by:
Laurie E. Ekstrand, Director:
Homeland Security and Justice Issues:
Signed by:
Nancy R. Kingsbury, Managing Director:
Applied Research and Methods:
[End of section]
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology:
In response to a request from F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., Chairman,
Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, this report
provides the findings of our evaluation of the impact of Community
Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants on the decline in crime that
occurred during the 1990s. Our objectives were to address interrelated
questions about COPS funds, officers, crime, and policing practices.
Specifically, regarding COPS funds: (1) From 1994 through 2001, how
were COPS obligations distributed among local law enforcement agencies
in relation to the populations they served and crimes in their
jurisdictions, and how much of the obligated amounts did agencies
spend? Regarding officers and crime: (2) To what extent did COPS grants
contribute to increases in the number of sworn officers and declines in
crime in the nation during the 1990s? Regarding policing practices: (3)
To what extent were COPS grants during the 1990s associated with police
departments adopting policing practices that the crime literature
indicates could contribute to reductions in crime?
Overview of Our Approach and Methodology:
To address our reporting objectives, we analyzed a database consisting
of 12 years of data from 1990 through 2001 on local law enforcement
agencies. To create this database--our primary analysis database--we
obtained data from several sources, and we organized the data as a
panel dataset in that it contained information on multiple law
enforcement agencies over multiple years. For each agency, we obtained
data on COPS and other federal law enforcement grant obligations and
expenditures from the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Office of Justice
Programs (OJP), and data on index crimes and the number of sworn
officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime
Reporting (UCR) Program. Index crimes include the violent crimes of
murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and
aggravated assault, as well as the property crimes of burglary, larceny-
theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.[Footnote 21] As shown in table
1, in 2002, property crimes constituted 88 percent of the 11,877,218
index crimes. Among violent crimes, robberies accounted for 3.5 percent
of all index crimes, and aggravated assaults accounted for 7.5 percent.
Table 1: Index of Crimes, 2002, as Reported by the FBI, Excluding
Arson:
Crime category: Index crimes[B];
Number: 11,877,218;
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 100.0%.
Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Violent crimes[C];
Number: 1,426,325;
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 12.0%.
Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Violent crimes[C]: Murder and non-
negligent manslaughter;
Number: 16,204;
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 0.1%.
Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Violent crimes[C]: Forcible rape;
Number: 95,136;
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 0.8%.
Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Violent crimes[C]: Property crimes[D]:
Robbery;
Number: Property crimes[D]: 420,637;
Percentage of index crimes[A]: Property crimes[D]: 3.5%.
Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Violent crimes[C]: Aggravated assault;
Number: 894,348;
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 7.5%.
Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Property crimes[D];
Number: 10,450,893;
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 88.0%.
Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Property crimes[D]: Burglary;
Number: 2,151,875;
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 18.1%.
Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Property crimes[D]: Larceny theft;
Number: 7,052,922;
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 59.4%.
Crime category: Index crimes[B]: Property crimes[D]: Motor vehicle
theft;
Number: 1,246,096;
Percentage of index crimes[A]: 10.5%.
Source: Table 1 of Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United
States, 2002, Uniform Crime Reports, Washington, D.C.: Department of
Justice. Printed annually.
Note: Although arson is part of the crime index, the FBI does not
estimate the number of arson crimes for the nation as a whole, and
consequently, it does not include an estimate for arson crimes in its
table 1 of Crime in the United States.
[A] Percentages for specific types of crime within a category may not
add up to category totals because of rounding.
[B] Sum of violent and property crimes.
[C] Sum of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape,
robbery, and aggravated assault.
[D] Sum of burglary, larceny theft, and motor vehicle theft.
[End of table]
We obtained data on some of the factors that the research literature on
crime suggests are related to changes in crime. From the Department of
Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis, we obtained data on local
economic conditions--including employment rates and per capita income-
-and from the National Center for Health Statistics and the U.S. Census
Bureau--we obtained data on demographic variables--including the
percentage of the population aged 15 to 24, and the racial and gender
composition of the population.
We also analyzed data from two surveys of nationally representative
samples of police departments on the policing practices that they
reportedly implemented in various years from 1993 to 2000. We refer to
the first survey as the Policing Strategies Survey, and it was
administered in 1993 and again in 1997.[Footnote 22] We refer to the
second survey as the National Evaluation of COPS Survey, as it was
completed as part of the Urban Institute's national evaluation of the
implementation of the COPS program, and we used the data from the
surveys that were administered in 1996 and 2000. [Footnote 23] The
multiple administrations of each survey allowed us to analyze changes
in policing practices. Using agency and year identifiers, we matched
and merged data from our primary analysis database with the agency-
level records in each of the surveys.
Prior to developing and analyzing our database, we assessed the
reliability of each data source, and in preparing this report, we used
only the data that we found to be sufficiently reliable for the
purposes of our report.
In addition, to identify policing practices that are considered to be
effective in preventing crime, we analyzed reviews of research and
evaluation literature. We also reviewed relevant economic and
criminological literatures that addressed issues related to estimating
models of the effects of federal grant funds on crime rates. We spoke
with officials at the Department of Justice about the operation of the
COPS programs, and we also spoke with researchers about our approach
and methods. We reviewed our approach and methods with a group of
experts in the field of policing and crime. The group consisted of
criminologists, economists, statisticians, and criminal justice
practitioners, and was convened for us by the National Research Council
of the National Academies to enable participants to offer their
individual views as experts in the field.
We conducted our work between January 2004 and August 2005 in
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
Methods Used to Address the Flow of Funds Reporting Objective:
To address our first objective, we analyzed OJP financial system data
on grant obligations and expenditures and UCR data on the size of
populations served by agencies and crimes occurring within the
jurisdictions of the agencies that reported crime to the UCR. We used
the OJP financial data to compute the amount of COPS funds obligated by
COPS grants and the amount expended by local police agencies during the
period from 1994 through 2001. To describe the overall COPS funding
trends by grant type, we analyzed the universe of agencies in the OJP
data that received any federal law enforcement grant during the period
from 1990 through 2001, regardless of whether or not the agency
received a COPS grant during the period and regardless of whether we
were able to link the data from these agencies to records in the UCR.
For the years from 1990 through 2001, the OJP data show that 13,332
agencies received any federal law enforcement grant. For analyses of
COPS funds by agency population sizes and for comparisons of funding
levels with levels of violent and total index crime, we limited our
analysis to the sample of agencies whose crime and population data we
were able to link to the OJP data. This resulted in a sample of 11,187
agencies in our primary analysis database. These 11,187 agencies
accounted for 86 percent of the reported crimes in the UCR data that we
received from the FBI.
The COPS Office distributed grants in a variety of programs. To
describe the amounts of COPS obligations and expenditures, we organized
the COPS grant programs into four broader categories of grants, and we
reported our results at the level of these broader categories. These
four categories include: Hiring, Making Officer Redeployment Effective
(MORE), Innovative, and Miscellaneous grants, and the specific grant
programs within each category, along with obligated amounts from 1994
through 2001 for each grant program and category, are shown in table 2.
Table 2: COPS Obligations, 1994 through 2001, by COPS Grant Categories
and Types of Grant Programs:
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Total, all grant
programs;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $7.616;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 100.0%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Hiring grant programs;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $4.863;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 63.9%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Hiring grant programs:
Police Hiring Supplement;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.143;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 1.9%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Hiring grant programs:
COPS Phase I;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.184;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 2.4%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Hiring grant programs:
AHEAD;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $1.245;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 16.4%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Hiring grant programs:
FAST;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $1.234;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 16.2%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Hiring grant programs:
MORE grants: Universal Hiring Program;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): MORE grants: $2.055;
Obligations: Percentage of total: MORE grants: 27.0%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: MORE grants;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $1.262;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 16.6%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant
programs;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.418;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 5.5%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant
programs: Advancing Community Policing;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.034;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.5%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant
programs: COPS 311;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.005;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.1%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant
programs: Distressed Neighborhoods Pilot Program;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.112;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 1.5%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant
programs: Community Policing to Combat Domestic Violence;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.070;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.9%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant
programs: Anti-Gang Initiatives;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.011;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.1%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant
programs: Integrity Initiative;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.018;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.2%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant
programs: Methamphetamine Initiative;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.089;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 1.2%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant
programs: Problem Solving Partnerships;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.038;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.5%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant
programs: School-Based Partnership Programs;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.031;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.4%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Innovative grant
programs: Youth Firearm Violence Initiative;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.009;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.1%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grants
programs;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $1.073;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 14.1%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant
programs: COPS in Schools;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.533;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 7.0%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant
programs: Demonstration Sites Program;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.005;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.1%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant
programs: Miscellaneous;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.132;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 1.7%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant
programs: Technology Grants;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.207;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 2.7%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant
programs: Regional Community Policing Initiative;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.084;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 1.1%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant
programs: Small Community Grant Program;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.013;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 0.2%.
COPS grant category and types of grant programs: Miscellaneous grant
programs: Tribal Grant Program;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars): $0.098;
Obligations: Percentage of total: 1.3%.
Source: GAO analysis of Office of Justice Programs financial data.
[End of table]
In our analysis, we compared the distribution of COPS obligations with
the distribution of crimes contributed by agencies serving populations
of 150,000 or fewer persons and those serving more than 150,000
persons. We used UCR population to identify agency size and crimes. The
UCR population may not reflect the population that agencies provided on
the applications for COPS grants. Our analysis of the distribution of
COPS funds describes the extent to which the distribution of funds is
related to agency size--as measured by populations served--and the
distribution of violent crimes.
Methods Used to Address the Effects of COPS Expenditures on Officers
and Crime:
To assess the effects of COPS expenditures on the number of sworn
officers and crime, we developed and estimated a two-stage regression
model of these relationships. In the first stage, we estimated the
relationship between per capita COPS expenditures and per capita sworn
officer rates in the agencies included in our sample. The per capita
measures were based upon the UCR population for the jurisdiction
covered by an agency. In the second stage, we estimated the
relationship between changes in per capita COPS expenditures and
changes in crime rates per 100,000 persons. As the relationship between
officer levels and crime rates may reflect a complex and interrelated
causal relationship, we used COPS hiring grants as an instrument to
help to identify the relationship between officers and crime. To use
COPS hiring grant expenditures as an instrument for sworn officers, we
made use of the fact that, unlike the purposes of other COPS grant
types, the purpose of hiring grants was limited to hiring officers.
Given the number of officers, variation in hiring grant expenditures
should be uncorrelated with other changes in crime. From our regression
results, we calculated the elasticity of crime with respect to officers
or the effect of a 1 percent change in the levels of officers on the
percentage change in crime. To assess the robustness of our results, we
estimated several specifications of our crime rate regression and
calculated the elasticities of crime with respect to officers for each
specification. We estimated these equations separately for each type of
index crime. We compared the range of our estimated elasticities with
those in the published literature on officers and crime. To estimate
COPS' contribution to the national decline in crime, we projected our
sample results to the nation as a whole by weighting our results by the
ratio of the total population in the United States to the population in
the sample of agencies included in our analysis.
In our regression models of the effects of COPS grant expenditures on
officers and crime, we organized our primary analysis database as a
panel dataset, and we limited our analysis to the 4,509 law enforcement
agencies serving populations of 10,000 or more persons and that
reported complete crime data for at least 1 year from 1990 through
2001. The number of agencies that reported complete crime data and
served populations of 10,000 or more persons varied over time, as in
1990 about 23 percent of all agencies in the UCR data that we received
from the FBI met these criteria, and in 2001 about 21 percent did.
However, these agencies also reported the majority of crimes to the
UCR. From 1990 through 2001, these agencies reported between 86.8
percent and 88.8 percent of all index crimes in the UCR data that we
received from the FBI. Because of data concerns with agencies serving
populations of fewer than 10,000 persons, we omitted these agencies
from our analysis.
We used fixed-effects regression models to estimate the relationships
among COPS expenditures, officers, and crime. Given that we included
agencies based on the completeness of their crime data in each year,
and agencies provided complete crime data in different numbers of years
over our 1990 through 2001 analysis period, our models used an
unbalanced panel approach. In all of our models, we expressed
expenditures, officers, and crime in per capita amounts. The fixed-
effects models provide estimates of the amount of change in our
dependent variables--the per capita sworn officer rate and the per
capita crime rates--that can be attributed to changes in the per capita
COPS hiring grant expenditures, controlling for other factors that
could also contribute to changes in the per capita sworn officer rate.
Our models included agency and year fixed effects to control for
unobserved differences between agencies and changes over time within
agencies in factors that could contribute to declines in crime. We
introduced state-by-year fixed effects into our regressions to control
for factors occurring at the state level--such as changes in
incarceration or state sentencing practices--that could affect crime
rates. Further, we included in our models variables that classify each
agency in categories based upon their pre-1994 trends in the growth of
officers and crime. These growth cell variables allow us to make
comparisons between agencies that were similar in their pre-COPS
program trends but that varied in the timing and amount of COPS
expenditures. Finally, we included in our models measures of other
federal law enforcement grant programs that also provided funds to
state and local law enforcement agencies for hiring officers and other
crime-prevention purposes. Specifically, we included measures of the
per capita expenditures on Local Law Enforcement Block Grants,[Footnote
24] which local governments could use to hire law enforcement officers,
pay overtime, purchase equipment, as well as several other purposes.
Because of data limitations, we were unable to track amounts of the
Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance (Byrne
Formula Grant Program)[Footnote 25] grants that went to local agencies.
Byrne Formula Grant funds could be used to provide for personnel,
equipment, training, technical assistance, and information systems,
among other purposes. In addition to the formula grant program, there
was also a Byrne discretionary grant program, and we included measures
for these grants.
In appendix VI, we provide the details about the specific models that
we estimated and our methods for calculating elasticities of the
relationship between changes in officers and changes in crime rates.
Methods to Assess Changes in Policing Practices:
To assess whether COPS funds contributed to changes in policing
practices, we analyzed data from the Policing Strategies and National
Evaluation of COPS surveys, two nationally representative surveys of
local law enforcement agencies that asked about the types of policing
practices that the agencies reported implementing in various years. In
each survey, chief executives or their designees were presented a list
of policing practices and asked to indicate whether their agency
implemented the practice. We classified items in the surveys into four
categories of policing practices corresponding to general approaches to
policing identified in the criminal justice literature: problem-solving
practices, place-oriented practices, community collaboration
activities, and crime analysis activities. Problem-solving practices
call for police to focus on specific problems and tailor their
strategies to the identified problems. Place-oriented practices include
attempts to identify the locations where crime occurs repeatedly and to
implement procedures to disrupt these recurrences of crime. Community
collaboration practices include improving citizen feedback about crime
problems and the effectiveness of policing efforts to address these
problems. Crime analysis includes the use of tools such as geographic
information systems to identify crime patterns. These tools may help an
agency support other practices for preventing crime, such as problem-
solving and place-oriented practices.
For each agency in a survey, we created a summary index of the number
of such practices that agencies reportedly implemented in the years in
which the surveys were administered. We then compared mean levels of
reported practices between groups of agencies that participated in the
COPS program and those that did not participate in the program.
We used the data from the Policing Strategies Survey to make pre-and
within-COPS program comparisons of changes in reported policing
practices in 1993 and in 1997. Levels of reported practices among
agencies that received COPS grants were compared with levels among
agencies that were not funded by COPS grants over this period. We used
the National Evaluation of COPS Survey to compare levels of practices
in 1996 and 2000 between groups of agencies that received COPS grants
and those agencies that were not funded by COPS over this period. In
appendix VII, we provide additional details about the surveys and our
methods for analyzing the survey data.
To assess changes in reported practices in relation to participation in
the COPS program, we estimated separate regression models of the
effects of the receipt of a COPS grant and per capita COPS expenditures
on changes in reported policing practices, controlling for various
characteristics of agencies and underlying trends in the reported
adoption of policing practices.
To identify policing practices that may be effective in reducing crime,
we analyzed six studies that provided summaries of research on the
effectiveness of policing practices and activities on reducing crime.
We chose to review studies that reviewed research, rather than
reviewing all of the original studies themselves, because of the volume
of studies that have been conducted on the effectiveness of policing
practices. (See app. VII for a list of the studies that we reviewed and
additional details on policing practices and crime.)
Database Construction and Samples Used in Our Analyses:
To construct our primary analysis database, which consisted of 12 years
of data from 1990 through 2001 for law enforcement agencies that
reported at least 1 complete year of crime data to the FBI's Uniform
Crime Reporting Program, we obtained data from several sources and
merge-matched information from these various sources to the level of
the local law enforcement agency. The sources of data that we used to
compile the annual observations from 1990 through 2001 on local police
departments included:
* Office of Justice Programs Financial Data--Annual data on the
obligation and expenditures on each grant awarded by OJP. Obligations
refer to the funds that are expected to be paid on a grant, and
expenditures refer to the grant funds that have been paid to a
recipient. Because OJP and the COPS Office share data on awards, the
OJP data also included COPS grant obligation and expenditure amounts.
We used data on grant obligation amounts to and annual amounts expended
by each recipient of a community-oriented policing (or COPS)
grant,[Footnote 26] and annual amounts of other federal local law
enforcement grants expended both by agencies that received COPS funds
and those that did not. We used information about place codes and OJP
vendors to link these data to our other sources.
* The UCR--Annual data files on the number of crimes and sworn officers
reported by each agency to the UCR. The data on sworn officers
represent the reported number of full-time officers in each agency on
October 31 of each year. We analyzed the number of sworn officers per
10,000 persons in the covered jurisdiction. We analyzed data on the
violent crimes of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape,
robbery, and aggravated assault, and the property crimes of burglary,
larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. We analyzed the crime rate per
100,000 persons in the covered jurisdiction for each type of crime, as
well as the rates for all index crimes, violent crimes, and property
crimes. We used the originating agency identifier (ORI) variable and
place codes to link crime and officer data to other data
sources.[Footnote 27]
* Bureau of Economic Analysis (U.S. Department of Commerce)--Annual
county-level estimates of per capita income and employment for each
year from 1990 through 2001. We included in our analysis of officers,
crime, and policing practices, measures of economic factors that are
related to crime, such as the employment-to-population ratio and per
capita income. We linked these data to agency-level data using place
codes. Local economic conditions within each county are applied to each
agency within a county.
* National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and U.S. Census Bureau-
-Annual estimates of the United States resident population for each
county from 1990 through 2001. Data obtained include population totals
and population breakdowns by gender, race, and age. Under a
collaborative arrangement with the U.S. Census Bureau and with support
from the National Cancer Institute, NCHS prepared postcensal population
estimates for 2000 through 2001. The Census estimates of county
population from 1990 through 1999 are updated to take into account
these postcensal estimates. We included in our analysis of officers,
crime, and policing practices measures of demographic factors that are
related to crime, such as the percentage of total population in the 15-
to-24 age group--an age group associated with high crime rates--and the
racial composition of populations. We linked these data to agency-level
data using place codes.
* Law Enforcement Agency Identifiers Crosswalk (Bureau of Justice
Statistics)--The crosswalk file provides geographic and other
identification information for each record included in either the
Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting Program files
or in the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Directory of Law
Enforcement Agencies (DLEA). The main variables each record contains
are the UCR originating agency identifier number, agency name, mailing
address, Census Bureau's government identification number, and Federal
Information Processing Standards (FIPS) state, county, and place codes.
We utilized FIPS codes to merge records from the crosswalk with OJP
financial data and then used agency ORI codes to merge the crosswalk
and financial data with crime data from the UCR.
Data Used in Our Analysis of Obligations and Expenditures:
To report on COPS obligations and expenditures, we first analyzed the
amounts reported in OJP financial data before we merged the financial
information onto the agency-level crime records in the UCR. In the OJP
data, each record represents either an obligation or an expenditure
amount, and an agency appears in the database each time it has either
an obligation or an expenditure. The total amount of obligations for
COPS grants for the 1990-through 2001-period in the OJP data was $7.62
billion.
Second, we linked the OJP financial data to agency information in the
BJS crosswalk file. We used agency identifying information in the OJP
financial data--such as FIPS state, county, and place codes--to link
OJP records with agencies in the crosswalk file. This resulted in our
identifying 13,332 agencies that had at least one record of an
obligation in the OJP financial data. Of these, 10,680 (or 80 percent)
received at least one COPS grant, and among the agencies that received
COPS grants, the total amount of COPS obligations was $7.32 billion (or
96 percent of all COPS obligation amounts).
Third, to describe the distribution of obligations relative to agency
population and crime, we selected agencies that reported complete crime
data--12 months of crime data within a given year--in at least 1 year
from 1990 through 2001, and we merged their records onto the records of
the agencies for which we had OJP financial information. This last
group contained 11,187 agencies, and 8,819 (or 78.8 percent) of these
agencies received at least one COPS grant. The total amount of COPS
obligations among these agencies was $6.01 billion (or 79 percent of
the total amount of COPS obligations from 1994 through 2001).
Data Used in Our Analysis of Officers and Crime:
To analyze the impacts of COPS expenditures on officers and crime, we
started with the UCR data and included in our samples agencies that met
specific criteria. First, we identified and included agencies that
reported at least 1 year of complete crime data--that is, 12 months of
crime data in a given year--to the UCR from 1990 through 2001, and we
included agencies only in the years in which they provided complete
crime data.
Second, we excluded from our analysis agencies that the UCR classifies
as "zero-population" agencies. To avoid double counting of citizens
within geographic areas, the UCR program assigns population counts only
to the primary law enforcement agency within each jurisdiction.
Consequently, transit police, park police, university police, and
similar agencies that are contained within these jurisdictions are
assigned a value of zero for population. Because of the fact that
jurisdictions among zero-population agencies overlap with primary
agencies, calculation of precise per capita crime rates for these
nonprimary agencies is problematic. Many state police agencies also
enforce laws among populations that are policed by other local
agencies, which also makes problematic calculating per capita crime
rates for state police agencies. Additionally, given that state police
agencies often have multiple substations in varied locations throughout
the state, the correct allocation of the proportion of federal dollars
to each substation is unknown. As a result, we excluded zero-population
and state police agencies from our analysis. Further, we included in
our analysis agencies whose crime records we were able to merge-match
and link with OJP financial data about COPS and other federal law
enforcement grant expenditures, as well as link with Bureau of Economic
Analysis and Census data on economic and population characteristics.
Overall, we identified 13,133 agencies that provided complete crime
data for at least 1 year from 1990 through 2001, that were not zero-
population agencies, and that we were able to link to our other data
sources. For example, in 1990, we found 10,160 agencies out of 17,608
that met our conditions. These 10,160 agencies represented 57.7 percent
of the agencies that were included in the 1990 data that we obtained
from the FBI, but they contained 93.2 percent of the crimes included in
the 1990 data. That the agencies that we included in our sample in 1990
represented about 58 percent of all agencies but 93 percent of all
crimes indicates that most of the agencies that we omitted with our
criterion of providing complete crime data within a year were small
agencies that reported relatively small amounts of crime to the
national total. For 2001, the 9,733 agencies that reported complete
crime data and were not zero-population agencies represented 49.1
percent of all agencies in the UCR data in 2001 and covered 94.8
percent of all crimes (table 3).
In our analysis of officers and crime, we further limited our sample to
agencies that covered populations serving 10,000 or more persons.
Complete crime data for agencies serving populations of fewer than
10,000 persons were missing for a large percentage of agencies, and we
determined that the data for these smaller agencies were unreliable for
the purposes of this report. In 1990, we found 4,051 of agencies
serving populations of 10,000 or more persons, which represented 23
percent of the agencies included in the data that we received from the
UCR for 1990 but also represented 86.8 percent of the crimes (table 3).
Table 3: Law Enforcement Agencies Reporting to the UCR and in Our
Analysis Dataset:
Database: Uniform Crime Report data provided by the FBI.
Number of agencies;
Year: 1990: 17,608;
Year: 1990: 100.0%;
Year: 2001: 19,820;
Year: 2001: 100.0%.
Number of index crimes[A];
Year: 1990: 13,962,575;
Year: 1990: 100.0%;
Year: 2001: 11,092,578;
Year: 2001: 100.0%.
Database: Agencies in the UCR data that reported complete crime data in
at least 1 year[B]:
Number of agencies;
Year: 1990: 12,168;
Year: 1990: 69.1%;
Year: 2001: 11,802;
Year: 2001: 59.5%.
Number of index crimes;
Year: 1990: 13,456,345;
Year: 1990: 96.4%;
Year: 2001: 10,902,718;
Year: 2001: 98.3%.
Database: GAO primary analysis dataset--agencies reporting complete
crime data in at least 1 year and not zero population agencies[B].
Number of agencies;
Year: 1990: 10,160;
Year: 1990: 57.7%;
Year: 2001: 9,733;
Year: 2001: 49.1%.
Number of index crimes;
Year: 1990: 13,010,329;
Year: 1990: 93.2%;
Year: 2001: 10,520,533;
Year: 2001: 94.8%.
Percentage of population in UCR data covered by agencies;
Year: 1990: [C];
Year: 1990: 86.6%;
Year: 2001: [C];
Year: 2001: 84.5%.
Database: GAO dataset used in the analysis of officers and crime--from
the primary analysis dataset, agencies serving populations of 10,000
and more persons.
Number of agencies;
Year: 1990: 4,052;
Year: 1990: 23.0%;
Year: 2001: 4,247;
Year: 2001: 21.4%.
Number of index crimes;
Year: 1990: 12,113,789;
Year: 1990: 86.8%;
Year: 2001: 9,797,096;
Year: 2001: 88.3%.
Percentage of population in UCR data covered by agencies;
Year: 1990: [C];
Year: 1990: 76.6%;
Year: 2001: [C];
Year: 2001: 76.8%.
Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report data.
[A] The number of index crimes reported in the data that we received
from the FBI is less than the number of index crimes that appears in
Crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reports. For example, for
2001, Crime in the United States reported a total of 11,876,669 index
crimes, while the data that we received from the UCR reported
11,092,578 index crimes. The totals reported in Crime in the United
States are the estimated total numbers of index crimes in the nation.
These totals are based upon the crime reports that the FBI receives
from individual agencies and upon the methodology that the FBI uses to
estimate crimes occurring in agencies that did not submit complete
crime reports. The data that we received from the FBI contain the
crimes actually reported by law enforcement agencies to the FBI.
[B] "Complete crime data" means that an agency reported 12 months of
crime data in a given year.
[C] Not applicable.
[End of table]
Data Used in Our Analysis of Reported Changes in Policing Practices:
To assess changes in reported policing practices, we analyzed data from
two separate surveys of nationally representative samples of local law
enforcement agencies. The surveys asked key officials at agencies about
the types of policing practices that they reportedly used. Both surveys
consisted of two administrations or waves of observations on the
agencies in their respective samples. The first survey, the National
Survey of Community Policing Strategies (or Policing Strategies
Survey), was administered in 1993 and again in 1997. A total of 1,269
agencies in the 1993 and 1997 samples responded to both waves of the
survey. We limited our analysis to the 1,188 agencies that had complete
data on each of the policing practices items that we included in our
analysis and that we were able to link to our larger database on crime,
officers, money, and economic conditions. These agencies amounted to
about 94 percent of the agencies that responded to both waves of the
survey. For comparability with our analysis of the effects of COPS
grants on officers and crime, we limited our analysis to the sample of
agencies that served jurisdictions with populations of 10,000 or more
persons.
The second survey, which we call the National Evaluation of COPS
Survey, was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center for the
Urban Institute in its national evaluation of the implementation of the
COPS program.[Footnote 28] Of the 1,270 agencies that responded to both
the 1996 and 2000 administrations of the survey, we were able to link
the data from 1,067 agencies to our larger database on crime, officers,
money, and economic conditions. We restricted our analysis to agencies
that served jurisdictions having populations of 10,000 or more persons,
and we excluded from our analysis state police agencies and other
special police agencies. (See app. VII for more information about the
sample of agencies that we analyzed.)
Reliability and Validity of the Data That We Used:
Prior to developing our database, we assessed the reliability of each
data source. To assess the reliability of the various data sources, we
(1) performed electronic testing for obvious errors in accuracy and
completeness; (2) reviewed related documentation, including data
dictionaries, codebooks, and published research reports that made use
of the data sources; and (3) worked closely with agency officials to
identify any data problems. When we found discrepancies (such as
nonpopulated fields or what appeared to be data entry errors) we
brought them to the agencies' attention and worked with them to correct
the discrepancies before conducting our analyses. We determined that
the data were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our report.
In our regression analysis of the effects of COPS expenditures on
crime, we use the UCR reported crime rates as our dependent variables.
Crimes reported to the UCR are those brought to the attention of law
enforcement agencies and subsequently reported to the UCR, or reported
crimes. Reported crimes are a subset of all crimes committed, which is
the sum of reported crimes plus crimes that are not reported to the
police. Our ultimate interest, however, lies in determining whether
COPS expenditures affected the crime rate for all crimes, whether or
not they were reported to the UCR. This raises issues related to
analyzing reported crimes to learn about all crimes.
Because data on all crimes--reported and unreported--committed within
local jurisdictions are unavailable in national data systems, we use
the data on reported crimes. The nature of the relationship between
reported crimes and all crimes therefore determines whether the results
of our analysis of COPS expenditures on reported crime would lead to
biased estimates of the effects of COPS expenditures on all crimes.
Under certain circumstances, it is possible that our analysis of the
effects of COPS on the reported crime rate could lead to overestimates
of the effect of COPS on the crime rate for all--reported plus
unreported--crimes. This would lead us to overstate the effect of COPS
in reducing crime.
Several conditions could lead to overestimates of the effects of COPS
expenditures on reducing crime. If the reported crime rate and the
crime rate for all crimes diverge, we would attribute to COPS a larger
reduction in crime than is warranted. If these crime rates diverge, the
reported crime rate would either decline at a faster rate or increase
at a slower rate than the rate for all crimes, and our analysis of the
effects of COPS on the reported crime would reveal either larger
declines or smaller increases than would occur if we had data on the
rate for all crimes. A divergence between the reported crime rate and
rate for all crimes could arise for either or both of two reasons:
Citizens do not report all of the crimes they experience to the police,
or the police do not record and send to the UCR all of the crimes that
citizens report to them.
To assess whether citizens decreased the rate at which they reported
crimes to the police, we reviewed data from the National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS). These data are drawn from a nationally
representative sample of households and are gathered independently of
the police agencies that report crime to the UCR. They therefore
provide a measure of crime that is independent of the reporting
practices of police agencies. Respondents in the NCVS are asked about
their experiences as victims of crimes. If respondents were victims of
crime, they are asked if they or others reported the criminal
victimization to the police. Using the NCVS data, it is possible to
assess whether the rate at which citizens report crimes to the police
has changed over time. These data show that during the 1990s, victims
generally increased the rate at which they reported crimes to the
police. As figure 5 shows, the decline in violent crime over the decade
was steeper for all crimes reported in the survey than for the violent
crimes reported to the police. Consequently, because the rates diverged
rather than converged, victims' practices of reporting of crime to the
police during the 1990s are not likely to lead us to overestimate the
effects of COPS grants on the crime rate.
Figure 5: Violent Crimes and Violent Crimes Reported to the Police, as
Reported in the National Criminal Victimization Survey and Including
Homicides from the Uniform Crime Reports, 1990-2001:
[See PDF for image]
[End of figure]
For police recording practices to lead to overestimates of the effects
of COPS grants on crime, it would be necessary for the agencies that
received COPS grants to decrease the rate at which they recorded and
reported crimes to the UCR. Research on police recording practices
suggests that agencies are unlikely to underreport serious crimes, such
as murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Other studies found,
second, that as police agencies adopt computer technology and become
more sophisticated in recording crimes, they became more likely to
increase the rate at which they included all citizen-reported crimes to
the UCR.[Footnote 29] As COPS MORE grants provided funds for
technology--such as laptop computers in police cars--that would have
increased the level of sophistication within agencies, COPS grantee
agencies would be more likely to report a larger percentage of the
crimes that citizens drew to their attention. Consequently, changes in
police reporting practices that stem from COPS grants and lead to
increases in police reporting of crimes to the UCR are likely to lead
us to underestimate the magnitude of effects of COPS grants on reducing
crime.
Two other conditions that could affect our estimates include the
following: (1) Criminals who commit the crimes that are not reported to
the police are unresponsive to the effects of COPS expenditures, and
(2) as the number of police increase, the number of reported crimes
increases, independently of the true crime rate.
If criminals who commit crimes that go unreported to the police are
unresponsive to police presence, then we would overestimate the effects
of COPS on crime only if criminals changed their behavior to victimize
more persons who would be unlikely to report crimes to the police. This
appears to be an unlikely occurrence, as the NCVS data show a
convergence between the total number of criminal victimizations,
especially for violent crimes, and the number of crimes reported to the
police.
Second, if the size of the police force systematically affects the
willingness of victims to report crime to the police or a police
department's likelihood of recording and reporting to the UCR crime
victims' reports, then these changes could lead to biased estimates of
the impact on the crime rate. However, if changes in reporting
behaviors occurred as the result of the COPS program, the likely impact
on our estimates of the effect of COPS grants on crime through their
effects on the number of officers is that we would underestimate the
effects of the grants on crime.[Footnote 30]
Given these considerations, our analysis of the effects of COPS
expenditures on crime is more likely to underestimate than overestimate
the effect of COPS funds on changes in the true crime rate.
[End of section]
Appendix II: Background on the COPS Program and Studies of the Impacts
of COPS Grants on Crime:
Established in October 1994 by the Attorney General to implement the
administration of community policing grants under the Violent Crime
Control and Law Enforcement Act (VCCLEA) of 1994,[Footnote 31] the
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services announced its first
grant program in November 1994. Prior to its establishment, in December
1993 the Department of Justice began making community policing grants
to state and local law enforcement agencies that the COPS Office
monitored. In 1993, DOJ awarded community policing grants under the
Police Hiring Supplement Program, which was established by the
Supplemental Appropriations Act of 1993 (P.L. 103-50 (1993)). The
grants made under this program were funded by DOJ's Bureau of Justice
Assistance.[Footnote 32]
Two goals of the COPS Office were to advance community policing by
providing funding for 100,000 community policing officers and to
promote the practice of community policing, an approach to policing
that involves the cooperation of law enforcement and the community in
identifying and developing solutions to crime problems. COPS attempted
to achieve these goals by providing law enforcement agencies with
grants to hire officers, purchase equipment, and implement innovative
policing practices.
COPS and Other Local Law Enforcement Grants Distributed throughout the
1990s:
According to our analysis of Office of Justice Programs data, from 1994
through 2001, the COPS Office distributed more than $7.6 billion in
grants. Grants were made in a variety of grant program funding
categories. Table 2 in appendix I contains more information about these
funding categories. The largest amount of COPS grant funds obligated--
about $4.8 billion, or 64 percent of the total--was in the form of
hiring grants. These grants required agencies to hire new officers and
at the same time to indicate the types of community policing strategies
that they intended to implement. Hiring grants paid a maximum of
$75,000 per officer over a 3-year period (or at most 75 percent of an
officer's salary) and generally required that local agencies cover the
remaining salary and benefits with state or local funds. Hiring
programs authorized under VCCLEA and administered by the COPS Office
included the Phase I program, which funded qualified applicants who had
applied for the Police Hiring Supplement but were denied because of the
limited funds available; COPS AHEAD (Accelerated Hiring, Education, and
Deployment) for municipalities with populations 50,000 and above; and
COPS FAST (Funding Accelerated for Smaller Towns) for towns with
populations below 50,000. In June 1995, Phase I, COPS AHEAD, and COPS
FAST were replaced by the Universal Hiring Program.
The next largest grant category was the Making Officer Redeployment
Effective (MORE) grant program, which provided funds to law enforcement
agencies to purchase equipment and hire civilians, with the goal of
expanding the amount of time spent on community policing. COPS
obligated more than $1.3 billion--or about 17 percent of total
obligations--as MORE grants. Additional COPS grant programs provided
funds for specific innovations in policing. For example, the Distressed
Neighborhoods Pilot Project grants provided funds to communities with
high levels of crime or economic distress to hire officers and
implement a variety of strategies to improve public safety, and the
Methamphetamine Initiative provided funds to state and local agencies
to support a variety of enforcement, intervention, and prevention
efforts to combat the methamphetamine problem. About $418 million--or
about 5.5 percent of the total--was obligated under these innovative
grant programs. The COPS Office also provided grants for a variety of
other purposes, including funding to meet the community policing
training needs of officers and representatives of communities and local
governments (through a network of Regional Community Policing
Institutes), and grants to law enforcement agencies to hire and train
school resource officers to help prevent school violence and improve
school and student safety (the COPS in Schools Program). Over $1
billion--or about 14 percent of total obligations--was obligated among
these miscellaneous grant programs.
In each year, the COPS Office was required to distribute half of the
grant funds to agencies in communities whose populations exceeded
150,000 persons and half of the grant funds to agencies in communities
with populations of 150,000 or fewer persons.[Footnote 33]
During the 1990s, other federal law enforcement grant programs also
provided funds to state and local law enforcement agencies for hiring
officers and other crime prevention purposes. The Edward Byrne Memorial
State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance (Byrne Formula Grant
Program)[Footnote 34] was a variable pass-through grant program
administered by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). According to
our analysis of data that we obtained from OJP, from 1990 through 2001,
the Byrne Formula Grant Program distributed between $415 million and
$520 million in grants. States were required to pass through to local
jurisdictions amounts of funding based upon a variable pass-through
formula. Byrne Formula Grant funds could be used to provide for
personnel, equipment, training, technical assistance, and information
systems, among other purposes. According to an evaluation of the Byrne
formula grant program, about 40 percent of Byrne subgrant funds--the
amounts passed through the states to local jurisdictions--were for
multijurisdictional task forces.[Footnote 35] In addition to the
formula grant program, there also was a Byrne discretionary grant
program. According to an official at the Bureau of Justice Statistics
(BJS), a large percentage of the Byrne discretionary funds were
targeted for specific programs.
The Local Law Enforcement Block Grant (LLEBG) Program was also
administered by BJA.[Footnote 36] The LLEBG grant funds amounted to
about an average of $475 million per year from 1996 through 2000.
According to BJS officials, these funds were allocated by a formula
based upon violent crimes as reported in FBI's crime index. LLEBG funds
were available to local governments for hiring law enforcement
officers, paying overtime, purchasing equipment, as well as several
other purposes. According to the Urban Institute's evaluation of the
implementation of the COPS program, agencies that received COPS grants
reported using both Byrne and LLEBG funds to support their transitions
to community policing.[Footnote 37]
Additional grant programs that provided funds to local law enforcement
agencies included the Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grants,
Weed and Seed Grants, and several Office on Violence Against Women
grants, according to a BJS official.
Debates over whether the COPS Office Met Its Goals for Officers and
Promoted Community Policing:
The amount of COPS funding was more than sufficient to fund the federal
portion for 100,000 officers. According to the Attorney General's
report, from 1994 through 2000, the COPS Office awarded more than
30,000 grants to over 12,000 law enforcement agencies and funded more
than 105,000 community policing officers.[Footnote 38] However, a
research report by the Heritage Foundation questioned how effective the
COPS Office had been in putting 100,000 officers on the
street.[Footnote 39] The study analyzed trends in the number of
officers and concluded that the COPS program had not added 100,000
additional officers above historic trends. In its review of the COPS
Office's performance for the fiscal year 2004 budget, the Office for
Management and Budget (OMB) indicated that by 2002, COPS grants funding
was sufficient for almost 117,000 officers, a number that exceeded the
program's original commitment to fund 100,000 officers.[Footnote 40] At
the same time, OMB acknowledged that fewer than 90,000 officers had
been hired or redeployed to the street. OMB reported that the COPS
Office counted 88,028 COPS-funded officers on duty as of August 2002--
or about 75 percent of funded officers. In their report of October 2002
on the COPS program, researchers at the Urban Institute updated earlier
estimates of COPS-funded officers.[Footnote 41] They projected that
over the years from 1994 through 2005, COPS-funded officers would add
between 93,400 and 102,700 officers to the nation's communities on a
temporary basis, but that not all of these officers would be available
for service at any one point in time. They further estimated that the
permanent impact of COPS, after taking into account postgrant attrition
of officers and civilians, would be between 69,100 and 92,200 officers.
In addition to promoting the hiring of officers, the COPS Office sought
to promote community policing. COPS hiring grant applications asked
agencies to report the types of practices that they planned to
implement with their grants, such as identifying crime problems by
looking at records of crime trends and analyzing repeat calls for
service, working with other public agencies to solve disorder problems,
locating offices or stations within neighborhoods, and collaborating
with community residents by increasing officer contact with citizens
and improving citizen feedback. In 2000, the Attorney General reported
that 87 percent of the country was served by departments that practiced
community policing.[Footnote 42]
Studies that have addressed the extent to which the COPS Office grants
caused the spread of community policing suggest that COPS grants
accelerated the adoption of these practices but did not launch the
spread of community policing. The Police Foundation's study of
community policing practices during 1993--1 year before the COPS Office
began making grants--indicated that the practice of community policing
was fairly widespread, especially in larger police
departments.[Footnote 43] The Police Foundation researcher reported
that 47 percent of the agencies surveyed in 1993 reported that they
either were in the process of adopting or had adopted community
policing, but that 86 percent of municipal agencies with more than 100
sworn personnel were either in the process of implementing or had
implemented community policing. In their evaluation of the
implementation of the COPS program, Urban Institute researchers
credited COPS with promoting community policing, but the researchers
concluded that COPS funds seemed to have fueled movements that were
already accelerating rather than have caused the acceleration. In a
later report, they pointed out that for large agencies, the problem-
solving practices that they examined were already widespread by 1995,
and almost no COPS grantees reported adopting problem-solving practices
for the first time between 1998 and 2000.[Footnote 44]
Some of the types of practices that agencies planned to implement with
their COPS grants correspond with approaches to policing that recent
reviews of policing practice suggest are effective in preventing crime.
[Footnote 45] For example, our review of policing practices indicates
that problem-solving policing and place-oriented policing practices--
such as those in which officers attempt to identify the locations where
crime occurs repeatedly and to implement procedures to affect crime--
are among the types of practices that research has demonstrated to be
effective in preventing crime. These practices were among the types
that agencies could implement with their COPS grants.
Debates about COPS' Contribution to the Decline in Crime in the 1990s:
In 2000, the Attorney General reported that COPS-funded officers helped
to reduce crime.[Footnote 46] The Attorney General's report to Congress
asserted that the drop in crime that occurred after 1994 was more than
would have been expected in the absence of the passage of VCCLEA and
the creation of the COPS Office. As evidence of the impact of COPS
grants on crime, it proffered the inverse relationship between
increases in the per agency number of police officers and decreases in
the per agency levels of violent crimes.
Studies of the impact of COPS grants on crime that attempted to take
into account factors other than just the underlying trends in crime
were released in 2001. A COPS Office-funded study examined the impact
of COPS grants on local crime rates in over 6,000 communities from 1995
through 1999.[Footnote 47] Analyzing changes in crime rates in
communities that had received COPS grants, the study concluded that
COPS hiring grants were effective in reducing crime and that COPS
grants for innovative policing practices had larger impacts on reducing
violent and property crime than did other types of COPS grants.
However, a study released by the Heritage Foundation, which was based
upon the analysis of county-level data, was unable to replicate the
findings of the COPS-funded study.[Footnote 48] Specifically, the
Heritage study found no effect of COPS hiring grants on crime rates,
but it found that grants for specific problems--such as gangs, domestic
violence, and illegal use of firearms by youth--were associated with
reductions in crime. In addition, our review of the COPS-funded study
found that its methodological limitations were such that the study's
results should be viewed as inconclusive.[Footnote 49]
The inconclusiveness of the findings of studies was reflected in OMB's
assessment of the performance of the COPS program. According to OMB,
although the COPS Office used evaluation studies to assess whether its
grants had an impact on crime, the results of the findings were
inconclusive, and OMB rated the COPS program as "Results Not
Demonstrated" in 2004 using its Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART).
Issues in Assessing the Contribution of COPS Grants to the Decline in
Crime in the 1990s:
Assessing whether COPS funds contributed to the decline in crime during
the 1990s is complicated by many factors. Nationwide, the decline in
crime began before 1993, which was before the COPS program made its
first grants. According to the FBI's data on index crimes--the violent
crimes of murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery and the
property crimes of burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft--the
decline in the overall index crime rate, as well as the property and
violent crime rates started as early as 1991 or 1992 (fig. 6).[Footnote
50]
Figure 6: Total Index, Violent, and Property Crime Rates per 100,000
Persons, 1990-2001:
[See PDF for image]
[End of figure]
As COPS grants cannot be the cause of the start of the decline in crime
rates, the other factors that led to the decline in the crime rate
could also have affected the decline in crime during the period that
the COPS Office made its grants. Factors such as a downturn in handgun
violence, the expansion of imprisonment, a steady decline in adult
violence, changes in drug markets, and expanding economic opportunities
are among those suggested as related to the decline in crime--
especially violent crime--in the 1990s. To the extent that these
factors also are correlated with the disbursement of COPS funds, this
increases the challenges involved in isolating the effects of COPS
grants.
Other federal funds for local law enforcement could also have
contributed to expanding the number of police officers and contributed
to declines in crime. If the distribution of non-COPS funds such as
LLEBG and Byrne grants is correlated with that of COPS funds, and if
research does not take these funds into account, a study could
attribute some of the effect on crime of these other grant funds to
COPS grants.
COPS grants were distributed in ways that make rigorous evaluations of
their causal impacts difficult to implement. Receipt of a COPS grant
was not randomly assigned; therefore, it is difficult to determine
whether the agencies that received grants are the same ones that, in
the absence of the grant, would have experienced reductions in crime.
The amount of funding certain agencies receive may also relate to the
agency's ability to combat crime. For example, certain police chiefs
may be more capable than others at acquiring funds and also more up-to-
date on policing methods. This underlying capacity of an agency to
organize policing, rather than the receipt of a particular grant, would
then be the cause of a crime decline as opposed to a particular grant.
Additionally, COPS grants were fairly widespread throughout police
departments and the nation as a whole. This distribution of grants
leaves relatively few unfunded agencies to serve as comparison groups
against which to assess the performance of the agencies that received
COPS grants. The roughly 12,000 agencies that the former Attorney
General reported received COPS grants by 2000 represent about 61
percent of the agencies that reported crime to the Uniform Crime
Reports.
The mechanisms by which COPS funds could affect crime have not been
explicitly examined. For example, the two prior studies that we cited
did not examine whether COPS grants potentially affect crime through
changes in police officers or through changes in policing practices,
both of which may have been affected by COPS funds. Additional officers
may affect crime by increasing police presence, by increasing arrests
that lead to incapacitation of offenders, or by deterring offenders by
increasing the likelihood of capture. Changes in policing practices
toward problem-solving or place-oriented practices that focus police
resources on recurring crime problems could also lead to reductions in
crime.
Appropriate methodologies from research on crime have been developed to
address issues that could confound efforts to assess the impacts of
COPS grants on crime rates. For example, if COPS grants are to affect
crime through their impacts on the number of officers, then isolating
the effects of increases in officers on crime presents a challenge in
assessing the direction of the relationship between officers and crime.
If additional officers are hired in response to increases in crime
rates, then it could appear that crime causes officers. Alternatively,
if additional officers lead to reductions in crime below the levels
that they would have been without the officers, then it would appear
that officers caused changes in crime. To isolate the causal effect of
COPS grants, researchers employ the use of instruments for causal
variables. One suggestion in the research literature for an instrument
for police officers is COPS hiring grants.[Footnote 51] To the extent
that COPS hiring grants buy only officers, COPS hiring grants can be
used as an instrument for the actual number of police officers and
therefore be used to estimate the relationship between crime and police
officers in a way that takes into account the possibility of this
simultaneous relationship.
Second, particular forms of statistical models take advantage of
information about the variation in the amount and timing of COPS grants
among agencies to assess how changes in the number of sworn officers
and crime rates are associated with these two sources of variation.
These fixed-effects regression models use a panel of data--or repeated
observations on the same units, in this case, police agencies, over
several time periods--to assess the effects of changes in the number of
sworn officers and crime rates that are associated with variation in
the timing and amount of COPS grant expenditures. These regression
methods also allow for the introduction of controls for unobserved
preexisting differences between units (agencies) and differences over
time within units. Incorporating each agency's underlying trajectories
(or growth rate trends) in crime rates and sworn officers into the
modeling of the effects of COPS funds allow for explicit comparisons
within groups of agencies sharing similar trajectories, which helps to
control for potential biases associated with preexisting
trends.[Footnote 52] By identifying and explicitly modeling the
mechanisms through which a program could have its effects--such as COPS
funds leading to increases in the number of officers and their effects
on crime--the possibility of a spurious relationship between inputs
(such as COPS funds) and outcomes (such as crime) can be minimized.
[End of section]
Appendix III: COPS Grant Obligation and Expenditure Patterns:
This appendix addresses how COPS obligations were distributed among
local law enforcement agencies in relation to the populations they
served and the crimes in their jurisdictions. It also addresses how
much of the obligated amounts agencies spent. Specifically, it covers
(1) the amount of COPS obligations between 1994 and 2001, (2) the
distribution of grant funds to larger and smaller agencies relative to
total index and violent crimes, (3) the number of agencies in our
sample that received COPS grants, (4) the amounts of COPS expenditures,
and (5) the amount of these expenditures relative to total local law
enforcement expenditures.
Smaller Agencies Received Larger Amounts of COPS Obligations per Crime
than Did Larger Ones:
Our analysis showed that from 1994 through 2001, COPS obligated more
than $7.32 billion to 10,680 agencies for which we were able to link
OJP financial data on COPS obligations to the records of law
enforcement agencies.[Footnote 53] As shown in table 4, about $4.7
billion (or 64 percent) of these obligations were for hiring grants.
Equipment and redeployment grants made under the MORE category of
grants amounted to about $1.2 billion (or about 17 percent) of total
obligations.
Table 4: COPS Grant Obligations 1994-2001, by COPS Grant Program:
COPS grant program category: Total, all grants;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars)[A]: $7.32;
Obligations: Percentage of total[B]: 100.0%.
COPS grant program category: Hiring grants;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars)[A]: $4.69;
Obligations: Percentage of total[B]: 64.1%.
COPS grant program category: MORE grants;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars)[A]: $1.22;
Obligations: Percentage of total[B]: 16.7%.
COPS grant program category: Innovative grants;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars)[A]: $0.42;
Obligations: Percentage of total[B]: 5.7%.
COPS grant program category: Miscellaneous grants;
Obligations: Amount (in billions of dollars)[A]: $1.00;
Obligations: Percentage of total[B]: 13.7%.
Source: GAO analysis of Office of Justice Programs financial data.
Note: Table 2 in appendix I identifies the specific grant programs that
we classified into these four categories of grants.
[A] Amounts for each grant program category may not add up to total
because of rounding.
[B] The percentages may not add up to 100 percent because of rounding.
[End of table]
As shown in table 5, from 1994 through 2001, slightly more than half of
the COPS obligations in the sample of agencies for which we were able
to link OJP financial data to the records of agencies that reported
crime and population to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting
Program[Footnote 54] went to those agencies serving populations of
150,000 or fewer persons and slightly less than half went to those
agencies serving populations of more than 150,000 persons, roughly
consistent with the requirements of COPS authorizing
legislation.[Footnote 55]
The largest agencies--those serving populations of 150,000 or more
persons--accounted for more than half of all violent crimes reported to
the UCR. Specifically, in our sample, these agencies accounted for
about 58 percent of all violent crimes reported in the UCR from 1994
through 2001. Their share of all violent crimes declined slightly from
60 percent from 1994 through 1997 to 57 percent from 1998 through 2001.
These agencies received about 47 percent of all COPS obligations, a
share that is disproportionately small relative to their contribution
to all violent crimes. However, as shown in table 5, the amount of COPS
obligations going to agencies serving populations of 150,000 or fewer
persons and those serving populations of more than 150,000 persons was
about equal to the distribution of all index crimes occurring within
these agencies.
Table 5: Percentage Distribution of COPS Obligations and Crime from
1994 through 2001, by Population Size Group:
Population size group (number of persons): Fewer than 10,000;
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 15%;
Percentage of total crimes: 7%;
Percentage of all violent crimes: 5%;
Percentage of all property crimes: 7%.
Population size group (number of persons): 10,000 to fewer than 25,000;
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 13%;
Percentage of total crimes: 11%;
Percentage of all violent crimes: 8%;
Percentage of all property crimes: 12%.
Population size group (number of persons): 25,000 to fewer than 50,000;
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 11%;
Percentage of total crimes: 12%;
Percentage of all violent crimes: 9%;
Percentage of all property crimes: 13%.
Population size group (number of persons): 50,000 to 150,000;
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 15%;
Percentage of total crimes: 22%;
Percentage of all violent crimes: 19%;
Percentage of all property crimes: 22%.
Population size group (number of persons): Subtotal (150,000 or fewer);
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 54%[A];
Percentage of total crimes: 52%;
Percentage of all violent crimes: 41%;
Percentage of all property crimes: 54%.
Population size group (number of persons): More than 150,000;
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 47%[A];
Percentage of total crimes: 48%;
Percentage of all violent crimes: 58%;
Percentage of all property crimes: 46%.
Population size group (number of persons): Total;
Percentage of total COPS obligations: 100%;
Percentage of total crimes: 100%;
Percentage of all violent crimes: 100%;
Percentage of all property crimes: 100%.
Source: GAO analysis of Office of Justice Programs financial and
Uniform Crime Report data.
[A] The subtotal for agencies serving 150,000 or fewer persons and
those serving populations of more than 150,000 may not add to 100
percent because of rounding.
[End of table]
Table 6 shows that law enforcement agencies serving the smallest
populations received the largest amounts of COPS obligations on a per
crime basis. For example, agencies serving populations of fewer than
10,000 persons received, on average, $1,573 per violent crime reported
from 1994 through 2001. By comparison, agencies serving populations of
more than 150,000 persons received $418 per reported violent crime.
Table 6: Per Crime COPS Obligations, by Population Size Group and
Category of Crime, 1994 through 2001:
Population size group: Fewer than 10,000;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: All index crimes:
$146;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Violent crimes:
$1,573;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Property crimes: $160.
Population size group: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: All index crimes: $78;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Violent crimes: $844;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Property crimes: $86.
Population size group: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: All index crimes: $61;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Violent crimes: $625;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Property crimes: $68.
Population size group: 50,000 to 150,000;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: All index crimes: $47;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Violent crimes: $404;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Property crimes: $53.
Population size group: More than 150,000;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: All index crimes: $67;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Violent crimes: $418;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Property crimes: $80.
Population size group: Total;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: All index crimes: $69;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Violent crimes: $525;
Ratio of total COPS obligations to total crimes: Property crimes: $79.
Source: GAO analysis of Office of Justice Programs financial and
Uniform Crime Report data.
Note: Ratios are computed as COPS obligations over the number of each
type of crime. The ratio for all index crimes is not weighted by the
contribution of violent and property crimes to the total.
[End of table]
Most Agencies Had Received Their First COPS Grant by 1996:
As shown in table 7, of the 10,680 agencies included in our analysis,
just under half (49 percent) had received at least their first COPS
grant by 1995, and 71 percent had received at least their first grant
by 1996. Of the 9,845 agencies that received at least one COPS hiring
grant, 53 percent had received their first hiring grant by 1995, and 73
percent had done so by 1996.
Table 7: Number of Agencies That Received at Least One COPS Grant
Obligation, 1994-2001, by COPS Grant Program, and Year of First COPS
Obligation:
Year of first COPS grant: 1994;
At least one COPS grant: 241;
Hiring grants: 241;
MORE grants: 0;
Innovative grants: 0;
Miscellaneous grants: 0.
Year of first COPS grant: 1995;
At least one COPS grant: 4,989;
Hiring grants: 4,988;
MORE grants: 0;
Innovative grants: 3;
Miscellaneous grants: 1.
Year of first COPS grant: 1996;
At least one COPS grant: 2,319;
Hiring grants: 1,965;
MORE grants: 1,394;
Innovative grants: 265;
Miscellaneous grants: 255.
Year of first COPS grant: 1997;
At least one COPS grant: 825;
Hiring grants: 750;
MORE grants: 624;
Innovative grants: 200;
Miscellaneous grants: 17.
Year of first COPS grant: 1998;
At least one COPS grant: 910;
Hiring grants: 941;
MORE grants: 231;
Innovative grants: 234;
Miscellaneous grants: 18.
Year of first COPS grant: 1999;
At least one COPS grant: 803;
Hiring grants: 605;
MORE grants: 1,010;
Innovative grants: 131;
Miscellaneous grants: 1,339.
Year of first COPS grant: 2000;
At least one COPS grant: 241;
Hiring grants: 141;
MORE grants: 216;
Innovative grants: 3;
Miscellaneous grants: 678.
Year of first COPS grant: 2001;
At least one COPS grant: 352;
Hiring grants: 214;
MORE grants: 378;
Innovative grants: 13;
Miscellaneous grants: 476.
Total number of agencies;
At least one COPS grant: 10,680;
Hiring grants: 9,845;
MORE grants: 3,853;
Innovative grants: 849;
Miscellaneous grants: 2,784.
Source: GAO analysis of Office of Justice Programs financial and
Uniform Crime Report data.
Note: The sum of agencies across specific COPS program categories does
not equal the total number of agencies that received at least one COPS
grant because some agencies may have received more than one type of
COPS grant in the same year.
[End of table]
We estimated that about 67 percent of the agencies that reported
complete crime data to the UCR for at least 1 year from 1990 through
2001 received a COPS grant by 2001.[Footnote 56] The percentages of
agencies that received COPS grants varied by the size of agencies, as
measured by the size of the population in the jurisdictions served by
the agencies. As table 8 shows, as the population served by the
agencies increased, the percentage of agencies that received a COPS
grant also increased. Among the largest agencies--those serving
populations of more than 150,000 persons--about 95 percent received a
COPS grant. By comparison, among agencies serving populations of fewer
than 10,000 persons, about 61 percent in our sample of agencies
received at least one COPS grant.
Table 8: Percentage of Agencies in GAO's Primary Analysis Sample That
Received at Least One COPS Grant Obligation from 1994 through 2001, by
Size of Population Served by Agencies:
Size of population served by agencies (number of persons): Fewer than
10,000;
Number of agencies: 7,940;
Percentage receiving at least 1 COPS grant: 60.6%.
Size of population served by agencies (number of persons): 10,000 to
fewer than 25,000;
Number of agencies: 2,673;
Percentage receiving at least 1 COPS grant: 76.2%.
Size of population served by agencies (number of persons): 25,000 to
fewer than 50,000;
Number of agencies: 1,127;
Percentage receiving at least 1 COPS grant: 81.7%.
Size of population served by agencies (number of persons): 50,000 to
150,000;
Number of agencies: 702;
Percentage receiving at least 1 COPS grant: 85.2%.
Size of population served by agencies (number of persons): More than
150,000;
Number of agencies: 185;
Percentage receiving at least 1 COPS grant: 94.6%.
Size of population served by agencies (number of persons): Total, all
agencies[A];
Number of agencies: 13,133;
Percentage receiving at least 1 COPS grant: 67.2%.
Source: GAO analysis of Office of Justice Programs financial and
Uniform Crime Report data.
Note: GAO's primary analysis sample consists of 13,133 agencies that
reported at least 12 months of crime data in at least 1 year from 1990
through 2001. (See app. I.)
[A] The sum of the agencies in each population size group does not add
up to the total of 13,133 because data on the size of the population
served were missing for 506 agencies. Among these 506 agencies, 276, or
54.5 percent, received at least one COPS grant.
[End of table]
Total COPS Expenditures and Per Capita Expenditures Peaked in 2000, and
Smaller Agencies Spent More than Larger Ones on a Per Capita Basis:
By 2001, agencies had drawn down about $5 billion in COPS funds (or
roughly 68 percent of all obligations awarded from 1994 through 2001).
As figure 7 shows, total COPS expenditures increased annually from 1994
to 2000. Total expenditures exceeded $900 million per year in each year
from 1998 through 2001, and in 2000, they exceeded $1 billion. COPS
hiring grant expenditures totaled $3.5 billion (or roughly 70 percent
of the roughly $5 billion in hiring grant obligations made from 1994
through 2001). Hiring grant expenditures peaked in 1998--exceeding $690
million--and declined slightly in 1999 and 2000.
Figure 7: Annual Expenditures of COPS Grant Funds, by Year:
[See PDF for image]
[End of figure]
The number of agencies that spent COPS funds peaked in 1998 and
declined thereafter, as figure 8 shows. In 1998, more than 7,500
agencies were spending COPS funds. However, by 2001, the number had
fallen to about 6,000.
Figure 8: Number of Agencies That Spent COPS Funds, 1994 through 2001:
[See PDF for image]
[End of figure]
COPS expenditures per population in the jurisdictions that spent funds-
-per capita expenditures--also increased as the total amount of COPS
expenditures increased. Total per capita COPS expenditures peaked in
2000 at $5.6 per person. Hiring grant expenditures per capita similarly
peaked at $4.8 per person in 2000. The per capita expenditure amounts
varied by size of agency, as smaller agencies generally spent more on a
per capita basis than did larger agencies. Agencies serving populations
of fewer than 10,000 persons spent about twice as much COPS grant
monies on a per capita basis than did the larger agencies. For example,
per capita COPS expenditures for agencies serving fewer than 10,000
persons averaged $6.6 as compared with about $3.4 for agencies serving
populations of more than 150,000 persons.
COPS Expenditures Amounted to about 1 Percent of All Local Law
Enforcement Expenditures:
From 1994 through 2001, COPS expenditures amounted to about 1 percent
of total local expenditures for nationwide police services, based upon
BJS data on criminal justice expenditures and our analysis of OJP data
on COPS grant expenditures.[Footnote 57] From 1994 through 2001, total
local expenditures for police services increased from about $46 billion
to $72 billion. During the years from 1998 through 2000, when COPS
expenditures neared and then exceeded $1 billion per year, the
contribution of COPS expenditures to local police expenditures
increased to about 1.5 percent of total local expenditures for police
services.
[End of section]
Appendix IV: COPS Expenditures Led to Increases in Sworn Officers and
Declines in Crime:
This appendix addresses our second reporting objective, which has two
parts: determining the extent to which COPS grant expenditures
contributed to increases in the number of sworn officers in police
agencies, and determining the extent to which COPS grant expenditures
led to reductions in crime through their effects on sworn officers.
COPS Expenditures Led to Increases in Sworn Officers above Levels That
Would Have Been Expected without Them and Were Responsible for about
88,000 Officer-Years:
We found that COPS hiring grants were significantly related to
increases in sworn officers above levels that would have been expected
without the expenditures, after controlling for economic conditions in
the counties in which agencies were located, population composition,
and preexisting trends in agencies in the growth rate of sworn
officers. Further, the effects of COPS hiring grants were consistent
across several different regression models, including those that
controlled for state-level factors that could affect the size of local
police forces--such as state-level differences in the amount of funding
provided to local departments. Overall, the parameter estimates from
our models indicate that each $25,000 in COPS hiring grant expenditures
was associated with roughly an additional 0.6 officers in any given
year.[Footnote 58] With the exception of MORE grants, no other types of
COPS grant expenditures were associated with increases in officers.
Using the results from our regression models, we calculated for each
year from 1994 through 2001 the number of sworn officers nationwide
that would have been on the street absent the COPS expenditures in each
year. The difference between this amount and the actual level of sworn
officers yielded the number of officers due to COPS expenditures in a
given year. The number of officers due to COPS increased from 84 in
1994 to 17,387 in 2000, and then declined to 12,226 in 2001 (table 9).
The increase and decrease in the number of officers due to COPS
followed the pattern of COPS expenditures, which peaked in 2000 and
then declined (see fig. 7 in app. III). Adding up the number of
officers due to COPS in each year across the years from 1994 through
2001, we arrive at a total of about 88,000 sworn officer-years due to
COPS expenditures.
From 1997 through 2000, when COPS expenditures neared or exceeded $1
billion per year, we estimated that the expenditures led to increases
in sworn officers of between 2.4 percent and 2.9 percent above levels
expected without them. In years prior to 1997, and in 2001, when COPS
expenditures were lower, the percentage of officers due to COPS
expenditures were lower than occurred from 1997 through 2000.
Table 9: Estimated Effect of COPS Expenditures on the Number of Sworn
Officers Nationwide in Each Year, 1994-2001:
Year: 1994;
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 84;
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 0.02%.
Year: 1995;
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 1,916;
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 0.35%.
Year: 1996;
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 8,639;
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 1.55%.
Year: 1997;
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 13,897;
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 2.42%.
Year: 1998;
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 17,630;
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 3.02%.
Year: 1999;
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 16,415;
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 2.72%.
Year: 2000;
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 17,387;
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 2.91%.
Year: 2001;
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 12,226;
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: 2.05%.
Total, officer-years[A];
Estimated number of officers due to COPS expenditures: 88,195;
Percentage of total number of officers in the United States: b.
Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data.
[A] The total number of officer-years due to COPS expenditures is the
sum of the number of officers due to COPS in each year. We call this
total the number of officer-years due to COPS expenditures. It is not
directly comparable with estimates of the number of sworn officers on
the street as a result of COPS funds or with estimates of the number of
officers funded by the COPS Office.
[B] Not applicable.
[End of table]
An officer-year is the number of officers in a given year that were
associated with COPS expenditures. According to this measure, an
individual officer--or person--might be included in our counts of
officers due to COPS in several years. Therefore, our estimate of the
total number of officer-years arising from COPS expenditures is not
equivalent to the number of officers that the COPS Office reportedly
funded, nor does it represent an estimate of the total number of
officers as a result of COPS grants. For a given year, however, our
estimate represents the number of COPS-funded officers on the street.
(For additional details on the methods we used to estimate the effects
of COPS expenditures on officers, see app. VI.)
LLEBG Funds Also Contributed to Increases in Officer Strength:
In addition to our findings of the effects of COPS expenditures on the
level of sworn officers, we found that Local Law Enforcement Block
Grants expenditures also contributed to increases in officers above
levels expected without them. Our finding about LLEBG grants effects on
sworn officers is consistent with interview and survey responses
reported by Urban Institute researchers in their evaluation of the
implementation of the COPS program.[Footnote 59] In their interviews
with police chiefs, they found that the chiefs reported that they used
LLEBG to supplement COPS funds. LLEBG grants could be used for a
variety of purposes in addition to funding officers.
COPS Expenditures Led to Reductions in Crime through Increases in
Officers:
Estimating the impact of COPS expenditures on changes in crime rates
through their effects on the number of sworn officers, we found that
COPS expenditures were associated with declines in crime rates for
total, violent, and property crimes, as compared with their baseline
levels in 1993, the year prior to the distribution of COPS grants. The
amounts of decline in crime rates varied among crime types and across
years. The variation in the decline in crime rates in various crime
types arose from our estimates of the effects of changes in officers on
crime rates, and the variation over time within crime types arose from
the variation in COPS expenditures. For example, for the total crime
rate, we found that the impact of COPS peaked in 1998, as for that
year, we estimated that COPS led to a reduction in the total crime rate
of almost 1.4 percent from the level of crime in 1993. From 1999 and
2000, COPS expenditures of between $920 million and about $1 billion
led to reductions in the total crime rate of about 1.3 percent, again,
as compared with the 1993 level. In years prior to 1998 and in 2001,
when COPS expenditures were lower than their levels in 1998 through
2000, the declines in total crime arising from COPS expenditures also
were less than 1.3 percent (table 10).
Similarly, for violent and property crimes, we found that the amount of
decline associated with COPS expenditures varied from year to year, and
for both of these crime categories, the largest decline in crime
occurred during 1998. COPS expenditures led to a decline in violent
crime of almost 2.6 percent in 1998, compared with violent crime levels
in 1993. For 1999 and 2000, COPS expenditures led to about a reduction
of about 2.4 percent in violent crime, from the 1993 level. For
property crimes, the impact of COPS expenditures from 1998 through 2000
was between 1.1 percent and 1.2 percent, as compared to the 1993 level
(table 10).
Table 10: Estimated Percentage Change in Crime Rates from 1993 Levels
Due to COPS Expenditures, 1994-2001, by Crime Type Category:
Year: 1994;
Crime category: Total crimes: -.01%;
Crime category: Violent crimes: -.01%;
Crime category: Property crimes: -.01%.
Year: 1995;
Crime category: Total crimes: -.16%;
Crime category: Violent crimes: -.29%;
Crime category: Property crimes: -.13%.
Year: 1996;
Crime category: Total crimes: -.70%;
Crime category: Violent crimes: -1.29%;
Crime category: Property crimes: -.60%.
Year: 1997;
Crime category: Total crimes: -1.11%;
Crime category: Violent crimes: -2.05%;
Crime category: Property crimes: -.95%.
Year: 1998;
Crime category: Total crimes: -1.39%;
Crime category: Violent crimes: -2.57%;
Crime category: Property crimes: -1.19%.
Year: 1999;
Crime category: Total crimes: -1.28%;
Crime category: Violent crimes: -2.36%;
Crime category: Property crimes: -1.10%.
Year: 2000;
Crime category: Total crimes: -1.34%;
Crime category: Violent crimes: -2.48%;
Crime category: Property crimes: -1.15%.
Year: 2001;
Crime category: Total crimes: -0.93%;
Crime category: Violent crimes: -1.73%;
Crime category: Property crimes: -.80%.
Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data.
Note: All estimates of the magnitude of the impact of COPS on crime are
made with respect to the level of crime in 1993, the baseline year for
our comparisons. The crime rates in 1993 in the data in our sample were
as follows: the total crime rate was 5,904 per 100,000 persons; the
violent crime rate was 846 per 100,000 persons; and the property crime
rate was 5,058 per 100,000 persons.
[End of table]
Our estimates of the impact of COPS expenditures on crime through their
effects on the number of officers represent the effects of COPS
expenditures on crime net of the effects of other factors that we
controlled for in our model--including changes in economic conditions,
population composition, and pre-COPS program trends in police agencies'
growth rate of sworn officers and growth rate in crime. By controlling
for pre-COPS program growth rates in officers and crime, we made
comparisons between agencies within population size categories that had
similar growth rates in officers and crime but which differed on the
timing and amount of COPS expenditures. In addition, through the use of
state-by-year fixed effects, we controlled for state-level factors that
could affect crime rates, such as changes in sentencing policy or state
incarceration.
As our estimates of the impact of COPS expenditures on crime come, in
part, from our estimates of the effects of changes in officers on
crime, we compared our estimates of the effect of changes in officers
on changes in crime with estimates of these effects that appear in
recent research. We found that each 1 percent increase in sworn
officers was associated with about a 0.4 percent decline in total
crime, about a 0.8 percent decline in violent crime, and a slightly
less than 0.4 percent decline in property crime. Our estimates of this
relationship--the elasticity of crime with respect to officers--is
consistent with estimates that appear in recent literature of the
effects of changes in police officers on changes in crime rates. Others
report elasticities that are similar to ours. For example, in a study
that used COPS granted officers to estimate the effect of increases in
officers on crime, the authors reported an estimated elasticity for
violent crime of -0.99 (a 1 percent increase in officers led to a 0.99
percent decline in violent crimes) and a property crime elasticity of -
0.26.[Footnote 60] In another paper that used electoral cycles to
estimate the effect of increases in officers on crime, the author
provides a set of elasticities under different model
specifications.[Footnote 61] The elasticity for property crimes was
calculated to be about -0.3, and the elasticity for violent crimes was
about -1.0. (See app. VI for more information on the methods that we
used to calculate our elasticities and to estimate the impact of COPS
expenditures on crime.)
Various Specifications of Our Regressions Yielded Consistent Findings
about the Effect of COPS Expenditures on Crime:
While we found that COPS expenditures were associated with reductions
in total crime and the violent and property crime categories, when we
examined the effects of COPS expenditures on specific types of index
crimes, we found significant reductions in murder, robbery, aggravated
assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. We found a negative
association between COPS expenditures and larceny, but this effect was
not statistically significant. Finally, we found a positive but
statistically insignificant association between COPS expenditures and
rape. (See table 17 in app. VI.)
Additionally, for agencies that served populations of 10,000 or more
persons, we found that the effects of COPS expenditures on the total
crime rate were consistent across agencies that served populations of
varying sizes with the exception of agencies that served populations of
between 25,000 and 50,000 persons. The magnitude of the effects tended
to increase with the size of agencies, where agency size refers to the
population served by the agency. In general, as the size of agencies
increased, we found that the impact of COPS expenditures on the total
crime rate also increased. For agencies serving populations between
25,000 and 50,000, we observed a negative relationship between COPS
expenditures and crime. However, the estimated effect was not
statistically significant. (See table 18 in app. VI.)
As there are uncertainties associated with formulated regression
models, and point estimates derived from a single regression model can
give misleading information, we estimated our regressions under
different assumptions about how COPS expenditures could affect crime.
Under the various models, we introduced lagged effects, nonlinear
effects for COPS hiring grants, and effects for the year of receipt of
COPS grants--to test whether the impact of COPS occurred in the years
in which the money was spent. From the various specifications, we
estimated the elasticity of crime with respect to officers. We found
that the elasticity for total crimes ranged from -0.41 to -0.95. The
elasticity that we used to calculate the impact of COPS on the decline
in index crimes was -0.42, which is at the lower end of the range of
elasticities that we estimated. Therefore, under assumptions different
from the preferred specification about how COPS expenditures are
related to officers and crime, we would arrive at a larger estimated
impact of COPS on the decline in crime than we report above. Also,
under the varying assumptions about how COPS expenditures are related
to crime, we estimated elasticities of violent crimes with respect to
officers and elasticities of property crimes with respect to officers.
For violent crimes, the elasticities derived from these regressions
ranged from -0.76 to -1.8. The elasticity that we used to estimate the
impact of COPS on the decline in violent crimes was -0.8. This
elasticity is at the lower end of the range of elasticities that we
estimated, which implies that the impacts of COPS on violent crimes
could be larger than the impacts that we reported. For property crimes,
the range of estimated elasticities was from -0.35 to -0.80. (See table
20 in app. VI.)
In addition to our findings of the effects of COPS expenditures on
crime, we found that LLEBG expenditures were consistently associated
with declines in total crime rates and declines in the murder, rape,
robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and larceny crime rates. Only
for motor vehicle theft did we not find a significant effect of LLEBG
expenditures. However, because LLEBG grant funds are related to the
levels of violent crime occurring within a jurisdiction, the
relationship between LLEBG expenditures and crime may be one of
bidirectional causality.[Footnote 62] By this, we mean because LLEBG
grant amounts were determined in part on the levels of violent crime,
violent crime in a community can be construed as a cause of LLEBG
grants in addition to an effect of having received them. (See table 17
in app. VI.)
Factors other than COPS Expenditures Contributed Larger Amounts to the
Reduction in Crimes, but COPS Contribution Was in Line with COPS
Expenditures:
The decline in crimes attributable to COPS expenditures accounted for
at most about 10 percent of the total drop in crime from 1993 to 1998,
and about 5 percent of the drop from 1993 to 2000. Therefore, various
factors other than COPS expenditures were responsible for the majority
of the total decline in crime during the 1990s. While in our regression
models of the effects of COPS funds on crime, we were able to control
for the effects of many factors that could be related to the decline in
crime, we did not attempt to estimate the amount that each of these
factors individually had contributed to the overall drop in
crime.[Footnote 63] Rather, by isolating the amount by which crime
rates declined because of COPS and comparing that amount with the total
decline in crime from our 1993 baseline year, we calculated COPS
contribution to the overall decline in crime. The amount of the total
drop in crime not associated with COPS expenditures reflects the amount
due to factors other than COPS.
While COPS' contributions to the decline in crime rates did not account
for the majority of the total drop in crime rates, the amounts of
declines in crime rates attributable to COPS were on the same order of
magnitude as were COPS expenditures' contributions to local law
enforcement expenditures for police. From 1994 through 2001, COPS
expenditures amounted to slightly more than 1 percent of total local
expenditures for police services nationwide. As we found and reported,
COPS expenditures were responsible for about a 1.4 percent decline in
the total crime rate.
[End of section]
Appendix V: COPS Expenditures Associated with Policing Practices That
Crime Literature Indicates Are Effective in Preventing Crime:
This appendix addresses our third reporting objective: determining the
extent to which COPS grant expenditures during the 1990s were
associated with police departments adopting policing activities or
practices that the crime literature indicates could contribute to
reductions in crime. Specifically, it describes the results of our
analyses of the relationships between COPS grant expenditures and
changes in policing practices reported in two surveys of local law
enforcement agencies, and it summarizes our assessment of studies that
conducted systematic reviews of research on the effectiveness of
various policing practices. Our analysis of the first of the two
surveys of policing practices compares changes in reported policing
practices between 1993 and 1997, that is, prior to the distribution of
COPS grants and after many COPS grants had been distributed. In our
analysis of the second survey, we compare changes from 1996 to 2000, or
during the implementation COPS program. In addition, we provide a
limited summary of our analysis of systematic reviews of evaluations of
policing practices that could contribute to reductions in crime. (See
app. VII for the details related to our methodology for analyzing
policing practices.)
Comparisons of Pre-and Within-COPS Grant Program Levels of Reported
Policing Practices Show That COPS Grantee Agencies Reported Larger
Increases than Non-COPS Agencies:
Prior to the implementation of COPS grants, many local law enforcement
agencies had adopted a number of problem-solving, place-oriented, crime
analysis, and community collaboration policing practices. Problem-
solving practices refer to efforts by the police to focus on specific
problems and tailor their strategies to the identified problems. Place-
oriented practices include attempts to identify the locations where
crime repeatedly occurs and to implement procedures to disrupt these
recurrences of crime. Crime analysis includes the use of tools such as
geographic information systems to identify crime patterns. Community
collaboration includes attempts to improve or enhance citizen feedback
about crime problems and the effectiveness of policing efforts to
address them.
Our analysis of the Policing Strategies Survey data for 1993--the year
before COPS grants were distributed--indicates that surveyed agencies
that received a COPS grant between 1994 and 1997 reported higher mean
levels of the above policing practices than agencies that did not
receive a COPS grant between 1994 and 1997. For example, in 1993, the
mean number of all practices reported by grantee agencies was about 13
out of a possible 38 practices, while the mean number of all practices
reported by nongrantee agencies was about 11 practices. However, among
the agencies that received a COPS grant between 1994 and 1997, there
were larger increases in the mean level of all reported practices
between 1993 and 1997 except for those related to crime analysis. COPS
grantee agencies reported in 1997 an increase of about 3.5 practices
overall, as compared with a mean increase of less than 2 practices by
the agencies that did not receive COPS grants during this period. The
largest differences between COPS grantees and nongrantee agencies in
the reported increase in practices occurred for the problem-solving and
place-oriented practices (table 11).
Table 11: Mean Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997, by
Category of Policing Practices and whether Agencies Received a COPS
Grant between 1994 and 1997:
Category of policing practice: Problem solving;
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 4.57;
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 5.80;
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 1.24;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 4.16;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 4.68;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 0.52.
Category of policing practice: Place oriented;
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 2.98;
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 4.21;
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 1.23;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 2.38;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 2.84;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 0.47.
Category of policing practice: Community collaboration;
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 3.48;
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 4.41;
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 0.93;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 2.69;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 3.45;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 0.76.
Category of policing practice: Crime analysis;
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 1.88;
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 1.93;
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 0.05;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 1.66;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 1.71;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 0.05.
Total;
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 12.90;
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 16.34;
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 3.44;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 10.89;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 12.69;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 1.80.
Source: GAO Analysis of Policing Strategies Survey, Office of Justice
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for
Health Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, and Uniform Crime Report data.
[End of table]
From a series of regression models of the effects of COPS grants on
changes in policing practices, we found that both the receipt of a COPS
grant, and the amount of per capita COPS expenditures by agencies were
associated with increases in the levels of reported policing practices
between 1993 and 1997. Our regressions control for the underlying trend
in the reported use of policing practices, for differences in agency
characteristics that could be associated with increases in reported
levels of policing practices--such as the size of the jurisdiction--and
changes in the economic and social characteristics of the county in
which the agency was located. We estimated separate regressions of the
effect of the receipt of a COPS grant and of the cumulative per capita
amount of COPS expenditures on the levels of reported policing
practices.
Our regression models for estimating the effects of receipt of a COPS
grant on the change in police practices between 1993 and 1997 show that
agencies that received at least one COPS grant had significantly larger
changes in the overall number of practices than did agencies that did
not receive a COPS grant during this period. Specifically, according to
our analysis of the survey data, the average number of practices
increased by 2.9 over this period, and the receipt of a COPS grant
accounted for 1.8 of this reported increase. Further, when we examined
our results from separate regressions for the different categories of
practices, we found that receipt of a COPS grant was associated with
significant increases in reported levels of problem-solving and place-
oriented practices, but was not related to changes in community
collaboration or crime analysis practices. (See app. VII for details.)
Our regression models further show that changes in practices were also
associated with the cumulative amount of per capita spending on COPS
grants. All other things being equal, a $1 increase in per capita
spending was associated with an increase of 0.23 policing practices. As
we found for the effects of the receipt of a grant on changes in police
practices, these regressions also showed that the level of per capita
spending on COPS grants was significantly associated with increases in
problem-solving and place-oriented practices. However, per capita
spending on COPS grants was also associated with increases in crime
analysis practices. (See app. VII for details.)
The Effects of COPS Grants on Agencies' Reported Increases in Policing
Practices Differed across Agencies Serving Populations of Different
Sizes:
Receipt of a COPS grant was associated with increases in the overall
adoption of policing practices among agencies serving populations of
different sizes. Regardless of the size of populations served, agencies
that received COPS grants adopted almost twice as many practices
between 1993 and 1997 as agencies that did not receive COPS grants.
However, in both years, agencies serving larger populations also
reported higher mean levels of policing practices (table 12 and fig.
9).
Table 12: Mean Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997, by Size
of Agency and whether Agencies Received a COPS Grant between 1994 and
1997:
Jurisdiction population (number of persons): 10,000 to fewer than
50,000;
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 11.87;
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 15.14;
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 3.27;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 10.12;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 11.80;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 1.68.
Jurisdiction population (number of persons): 50,000 to 150,000;
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 14.58;
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 18.70;
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 4.12;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 14.40;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 16.81;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 2.41.
Jurisdiction population (number of persons): More than 150,000;
COPS grantee agencies: 1993: 19.30;
COPS grantee agencies: 1997: 22.82;
COPS grantee agencies: Difference: 3.52;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1993: 19.00;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: 1997: 20.91;
Agencies that did not receive a COPS grant: Difference: 1.91.
Source: GAO Analysis of Policing Strategies Survey and Office of
Justice Programs financial data.
[End of table]
Figure 9: Reported Levels of Policing Practices in 1993 and 1997 in
Agencies That Received and Did Not Receive COPS Grants, by Size of
Population Served:
[See PDF for image]
[End of figure]
Our regressions of the effect of COPS expenditures on changes in
reported levels of policing practices between 1993 and 1997, indicate,
however, that the effects of receiving a COPS grant were larger in
agencies in jurisdictions serving fewer than 50,000 persons and in
jurisdictions serving more than 150,000 persons, than in agencies in
jurisdictions serving populations of between 50,000 and 150,000
persons.
Reported Levels of Policing Practices among COPS Grantees Did Not
Increase Overall from 1996 to 2000:
Our analysis of the National Evaluation of COPS Survey data on policing
practices in 1996 and in 2000 also showed that agencies that received
COPS grants reported larger increases in the mean level of policing
practices than did non-COPS grantee agencies, but that the effects were
not statistically significant. The findings suggest that there was no
continued overall increase in reported policing practices in the period
from 1996 to 2000.
Regardless of when agencies received COPS grants and made COPS
expenditures, we found that COPS grantee agencies reported larger
increases in policing practices between 1996 and 2000 than did the
agencies that did not have COPS grants in these years. For example, for
the agencies that received their first COPS grant in 1996 or before,
the average increase in reported use of policing practices from 1996 to
2000 was about 21 percent, and for the agencies that made COPS grant
expenditures after 1996, the average increase in reported use of
policing practices was about 17 percent. By contrast, for the agencies
that had not made any COPS grant expenditures by 2000, there was about
a 0.2 percent decrease in the reported use of policing practices from
1996 to 2000, and for the agencies that did not make any COPS grant
expenditures after 1996, there was about a 3 percent increase in the
reported use of policing practices from 1996 to 2000 (table 13).
Table 13: Difference in Mean Levels of Reported Policing Practices in
1996 and 2000, by Category of Policing Practices and Timing of COPS
Grant Expenditures:
Category of policing practice: Problem solving and place oriented;
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 6.09;
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 1.00;
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 6.08;
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 1.45;
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 6.91;
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 0.11;
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: 7.08;
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: - 0.13.
Category of policing practice: Community collaboration;
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 3.36;
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 0.53;
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 3.42;
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 0.56;
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 3.28;
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 0.47;
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: 3.33;
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: 0.38.
Category of policing practice: Crime analysis;
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 1.67;
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 0.32;
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 1.70;
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 0.39;
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 1.87;
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: -0.20;
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: 1.88;
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: -0.26.
Total;
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 11.12;
Made COPS expenditures after 1996: 1.86;
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 11.21;
Made COPS expenditures in 1996 or before: 2.38;
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 12.06;
Did not make COPS expenditures after 1996: 0.38;
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: 12.30;
Did not make COPS expenditures between 1994 and 2000: -0.02.
Source: GAO analysis of National Evaluation of COPS Survey and Office
of Justice Programs financial data.
[End of table]
Although we observed larger average increases in reported policing
practices among agencies that spent COPS grant funds than among
agencies that did not spend COPS grant funds, when we controlled for
underlying trends in the reported adoption of policing practices and
agency characteristics, we found that changes in per capita COPS
expenditures made between the period preceding wave 1 of the survey
(1994 through 1996) and the period following wave 1 of the survey (1997
through 2000) were not associated with changes in reported overall
policing practices between 1996 and 2000 (app. VII). This suggests that
there was no continued overall increase in reported policing practices
in the period from 1996 to 2000, as a function of COPS grant
expenditures.
Crime Literature Provides Evidence for Effectiveness of Some Policing
Practices:
Our analysis of six systematic reviews of evaluations of the
effectiveness of various policing practices in preventing crime
indicates that the current evidence ranges from moderate to strong that
problem-oriented policing practices and place-oriented practices are
either effective or promising as strategies for addressing crime
problems. For example, problem-oriented approaches that focus on
criminogenic substances such as guns and drugs appear to be effective
in reducing both violent and property crimes. And hot spots approaches-
-place-oriented approaches that temporarily apply police resources to
discrete locations where crime is concentrated at much higher rates
than occur jurisdictionwide--have also been found to be effective in
reducing crime. However, the magnitudes of the effects of these
interventions are difficult to estimate, especially on citywide crime
rates, as the interventions that were reviewed as effective generally
were concentrated in comparatively small places. Further, the enduring
nature of these interventions is not fully understood. It is not known,
for example, how long the effects of a problem-or place-oriented
intervention persist. In addition, some of the reviews point out that
research designs undertaken to date make it difficult to disentangle
the effects of problem-oriented policing from hot spots policing. There
is suggestive, but limited, evidence that the combination of these
practices may be more effective in preventing or reducing crime than
any one strategy alone.
In contrast to the findings on problem-oriented and place-oriented
policing practices, there is little evidence in the literature for the
effectiveness of community collaboration practices--such as increasing
foot patrol, establishing community partnerships, and encouraging
citizen involvement--in reducing or preventing crime.
[End of section]
Appendix VI: Methods Used to Estimate the Effects of COPS Funds on
Officers and Crime:
In this appendix, we describe the methods we used to address our
reporting objective regarding the impacts of the COPS funds on officers
and crime: determining (1) the extent to which COPS grant expenditures
contributed to increases in the number of sworn officers in police
agencies in the 1990s and (2) the extent to which COPS expenditures
contributed to declines in crime in the 1990s through their effects, if
any, on officers.
Prior Literature on the Relationship between Officers and Crime
Addresses Issues Relating to Estimating the Effects of COPS Funds on
Crime:
In examining the effect of COPS funds on crime, we estimate the impacts
of the funds on crime through their impacts on officers. The effect of
police on crime has a theoretical basis in the economics literature.
Economic models posit that criminals weigh the gains from criminal
activity against its costs--the possibility of arrest and
incarceration. Anything that increases the probability of arrest, such
as additional police, will thus deter criminal activity; we might call
this the deterrence effect. A second effect stems from arrests
directly. If criminals are arrested and incarcerated, they will not be
able to commit street crimes; we might call this the incapacitation
effect.
The relationship between police and crime has been studied empirically,
with mixed results. Several reviews of research that investigated this
relationship have reported that a minority of papers find a significant
negative relationship between increases in the number of officers and
crime.[Footnote 64] However, these reviews also point out that many of
the studies have methodological flaws. In a report to Congress on what
works in crime prevention, Lawrence Sherman and others drew upon a
limited body of research that addressed the methodological concerns and
concluded that increases in the number of police officers work to
prevent crime.[Footnote 65]
One of the major methodological issues associated with estimating the
relationship between police officers and crime is the issue of reverse
causality. This issue revolves around determining how to disentangle
the relationship between the number of police officers and crime, as
municipalities having higher crime rates generally also have more
officers. For example, Detroit has twice as many police per capita as
Omaha and four times the violent crime rate, but it would be incorrect
to conclude that the additional officers in Detroit were the cause of
its higher crime rate than Omaha's.[Footnote 66] By simply comparing a
municipality's police force and crime rate to those in other
municipalities, one would incorrectly infer that Detroit's higher crime
rate was caused by its additional police officers.
Repeated observations on crime and police in a locality lead to a more
robust research design by controlling for the time-invariant
differences in rates of crime and police between areas. This is done by
introducing fixed effects into regression models. Using this approach,
the question that the analysis attempts to address becomes: Do we see
the crime rate fall as the number of police rises? By controlling for
the "baseline" crime rates in different areas, some researchers have
estimated a negative relationship between police and crime.[Footnote
67]
However, if the rise in the number of police in a locality is a
response to increasing crime rates, including fixed effects does not
resolve the issue of reverse causality raised by the Detroit example. A
next step is to introduce an instrument--for example, a variable that
affects the size of the police force but that, given this size, does
not affect crime. In one study, the researcher made use of the fact
that the size of a police force increases before an election. If the
only way that crime is affected by the election is through the number
of police, then this approach can be used to estimate the relationship
between crime and police. In this study, the researcher found that
crime fell in several index categories before an election.[Footnote 68]
A series of more recent papers that used instruments found a negative
relationship between police and crime. Two studies used an increase in
police presence because of a terrorist alert and showed declines in
nonterrorist-related crimes within a single city. In a study of Buenos
Aires, the researchers found that police stationed in response to a
terrorist threat on Jewish centers caused a decline in automobile
theft.[Footnote 69] In another paper, the researchers showed that crime
fell in Washington, D.C., on days when the Department of Homeland
Security increased the terror alert level.[Footnote 70] At the national
level, researchers at the University of Maryland used the number of
police officers granted through the COPS program as an instrument for
the actual number of police and estimated negative relationships
between increases in police officers and crime.[Footnote 71]
Our Approach to Estimating the Effects of COPS Expenditures on Officers
and Crime:
We adopted a two-stage approach to estimating the effects of COPS
expenditures on crime. Much as the University of Maryland researchers
did, we used COPS funds as a source of variation to explain officers.
However, while the University of Maryland researchers used officers
granted by COPS funds, we used COPS expenditure amounts--the actual
COPS dollars spent by agencies in given years--as the source of
variation. We began with an analysis of the "first stage" and tested
whether COPS funds had an effect on the number of officers. To the
extent that hiring funds affected the number of police but did not
affect crime in any other way, these funds would be a valid instrument
for estimating the effect of officers on crime. We then estimated the
"reduced form," or the relationship between COPS expenditures and
crime. Using parameters estimated from these regressions, we are able
to calculate the relationship between police and crime.
This approach has limitations, however. For example, we learn very
little about how agencies operate. If agencies were to use the
additional officers to employ different police tactics, and were able
to reduce crime, we would be unable to say whether it was the increase
in officer numbers or tactics that was the true cause of the decrease.
Thus, we would be unable to contribute to the question of whether
increases in officer strength are either necessary or sufficient to
reduce crime, without a change in police tactics.
A second concern is that agencies that were more likely to take
initiative in applying for and receiving COPS grants might be those
that were also more effective in preventing crime. These agencies might
also be those that achieved larger or more rapid declines in crime. If
this were the case, we might incorrectly associate declines in crime
with COPS grant expenditures because of other possible factors. To
assess this potential, we estimated a regression that predicted whether
an agency spent COPS funds in a given year from 1994 through 2001 based
on demographic characteristics, economic conditions, and lagged
property and violent crime rates. From the regressions, we predicted
the probability of spending COPS grant funds--or the propensity of
agencies to spend COPS funds. Whether or not an agency actually spent
COPS funds, it received a propensity score, based upon the values of
its characteristics in the model that predicated the probability of
spending COPS funds. Agencies that actually spent COPS funds can then
be compared to similar agencies--those with similar propensity scores-
-that did not spend COPS funds. We grouped agencies into five
categories based on their propensity scores. Within each of these five
categories, we compared the patterns of violent crime rates and
property crime rates between the agencies that spent COPS funds and
those that did not spend them. Our analysis showed that within these
groupings of agencies having similar propensity scores, the agencies
that actually spent COPS funds generally had larger declines in crime
rates than did those that did not spend COPS funds.
Another question is whether a drop in a specific crime type, such as
automobile theft, in a certain locality is a net gain for society as a
whole. For example, the rationality of criminals may lead them to
respond to an increase in the number of police by moving to an area
with fewer police or switching to a different type of crime.[Footnote
72] In addition, there is the possibility that an increase in the
number of police increases the reporting rate of crimes, and not the
crimes themselves.[Footnote 73] This possibility, however, would lead
us to underestimate the effects of COPS funds on crime, as discussed in
appendix I.
Model of the Effect of COPS Expenditures on the Number of Police
Officers:
Our main specification estimated the effect of COPS funds on officers,
using the following control variables:
[See PDF for formula]
[End of formula]
We included state-by-year fixed effects--represented by st--to correct
for changes in crime policy at the state level, such as changes in the
number incarcerated and changes in sentencing policy. We included
agency fixed effects--represented by i--to capture time invariant
differences across agencies, and time fixed effects--represented by t-
-to capture changes affecting the entire nation.
Because of how the money was distributed, there may be some concern
that our estimate of the effect of the COPS money on officers is
biased. For example, it might be that agencies that received a
disproportionate share of the money relative to their populations had
the benefit of preexisting positive growth of numbers of officers, in
addition to possible declines in crime. If the trends continued, we
might be incorrectly associating increases in officers or decreases in
crime with the amount of COPS money received, rather than these
preexisting trends.
To address this concern, we separated the agencies into four groups,
based on the growth rate in both officers and crime during 1990-1993,
when the COPS program was introduced. We constructed each combination
of these groups, producing 16 cells. These cells were then "interacted"
with each year and four population categories, for a total of 768
effects. In essence, each agency was compared with another agency that
had a similar "trajectory" of crime and officers in the pre-COPS
period.[Footnote 75] These growth trends are represented by the
(quartile of prior growth rates) expression in equation (1).
Finally, to obtain estimates of the effects of COPS expenditures on
officers relative to the average person in the United States, we
estimated weighted regressions where the weights were the population
served by an agency.
Because of these effects, the parameters of interest, 1 though 4, are
the effect of the COPS funds once other federal funds, demographic and
economic conditions, time and agency fixed effects, and these "growth
rate" effects are controlled for.
Model of the Effect of COPS Expenditures on Crime:
As with our methodology in estimating the effect of COPS funds on
officers, we estimate the effect of COPS funds on crime. Our main
specification used the following controls in the following equation:
[See PDF for formula]
[End of formula]
The independent variables are identical to those defined for equation
(1). The dependent variable (CRIMEit) is the UCR total--or index--crime
rate. We also estimate separate equations for the crime rates of
components of the crime index: murder and non-negligent manslaughter,
forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny theft,
and motor vehicle theft.[Footnote 76] Again, the parameters of interest
are m1 through m4.
As in equation (1), the economic and demographic covariates in equation
(2) are represented by Xit; i, t, and st represent the agency, year,
and state-times-year fixed effects; and we also include the pre-1993
growth rate variables.
The Implied Relationship between Police Officers and Crime:
Unlike the other COPS grant types, COPS hiring grants were to be used
specifically for hiring officers. Consequently, variation in the number
of officers coming from COPS hiring grants should be unrelated to other
changes in police expenditures. In this sense, it may be a valid
instrument for officers.
Using the coefficients of officers in equations (1) and (2), we
calculated an estimate of the change in crime with respect to change in
officers: (m1/1), m1 and 1 are the coefficients from equations (1) and
(2).
The elasticity is a measure of the percentage change in crime derived
from a percentage change in police. We used coefficients of officers in
equations (1) and (2) to calculate an estimate of the elasticity of
crime with respect to officers in 1993:
[See PDF for formula]
[End of formula]
To test the robustness of our estimates under different assumptions
about how COPS grant expenditures are related to officers and crime, we
estimated the elasticity of crime with respect to officers under a
number of different specifications, as described in table 14.
Table 14: Alternate Specifications of the Relationship between COPS
Expenditures and Crime:
Variable in specification: MORE, Innovative, and Miscellaneous COPS
expenditures;
1: Included;
2: Included;
3: Not included;
4: Not included;
5: Included.
Variable in specification: LLEBG, Byrne discretionary, and other
federal non-COPS expenditures;
1: Included;
2: Included;
3: Not included;
4: Not included;
5: Included.
Variable in specification: "Got grant" specification;
1: Not included;
2: Not included;
3: Not included;
4: Not included;
5: Included.
Variable in specification: Lagged values of MORE, Innovative, and
Miscellaneous COPS expenditures;
1: Not included;
2: Not included;
3: Included;
4: Included;
5: Not included.
Variable in specification: Lagged values of LLEBG, Byrne discretionary,
and other federal non-COPS expenditures;
1: Not included;
2: Not included;
3: Included;
4: Included;
5: Not included.
Variable in specification: Demographic and economic controls;
1: Included;
2: Included;
3: Included;
4: Included;
5: Included.
Variable in specification: Growth rate cells;
1: Not included;
2: Included;
3: Included;
4: Not included;
5: Included.
Variable in specification: Lagged value of Hiring grant expenditures;
1: Not included;
2: Not included;
3: Included;
4: Not included;
5: Not included.
Variable in specification: Quadratic term for Hiring grant
expenditures;
1: Not included;
2: Included;
3: Not included;
4: Not included;
5: Not included.
Variable in specification: State by year fixed effects;
1: Not included;
2: Included;
3: Included;
4: Included;
5: Included.
Source: GAO analysis.
Note: An "included" indicates that a variable was included in a
specification.
[End of table]
Other than the "got grant" specification, all variables are as defined
above. Including the "got grant" variable provides a test for whether
the effects of COPS grants occurred in the year in which the money was
actually spent--as we specified in equations (1) and (2)--or whether
the announcement of a grant award led to changes in officers and,
subsequently, crime. If the announcement of the award were more
important than the actual expenditures, it would imply that estimates
of the effect of changes in expenditures on officers or crime in
equations (1) and (2) would overstate the effects. To address this, we
added indicator variables for the year in which a grant was received.
Additionally, the quadratic term for COPS hiring grant expenditures
provides a test for nonlinear effects of COPS hiring grants on crime.
This specification examines whether the effects of officers on crime
diminish as the number of officers rises above certain levels.
Data Used in Our Analysis:
We use data on 4,247 police agencies that reported complete crime (12
months of crime) in any year and that served populations of 10,000 or
more persons. These agencies represented about 23 percent of the
agencies that appeared in the UCR data that we received from the FBI.
However, they also covered more than 86 percent of the crimes and they
represented about 77 percent of the population in the UCR data that we
received. Because of concerns about data quality, we restricted our
sample to agencies that met these criteria of complete crime reporters
and serving populations larger than 10,000 persons. Across years, the
number of agencies that met these conditions varies, so our panel of
data is unbalanced. We used grant expenditure data from the OJP
financial data, which we linked to the crime and officer records of
agencies. We included county level demographic and economic data from
the Census Bureau, the National Center for Health Statistics, and the
Bureau of Economic Analysis. (See app. I for more information regarding
the construction of the dataset.)
Table 15 provides the means and standard deviations of the variables
included in the regression models. As shown in the table, the per
capita expenditures derived from COPS hiring grants exceeded the per
capita amounts from other federal grants.
Table 15: Means and Standard Deviations of Variables Used in Regression
Models:
Variables: Officers per 10,000 persons;
Mean: 20.31;
Standard deviation: 12.37.
Federal grant expenditures per capita:
Variables: COPS hiring;
Mean: 0.978;
Standard deviation: 2.18.
Variables: COPS MORE;
Mean: 0.292;
Standard deviation: 1.35.
Variables: COPS innovative;
Mean: 0.082;
Standard deviation: 0.496.
Variables: COPS miscellaneous;
Mean: 0.003;
Standard deviation: 0.043.
Variables: Byrne discretionary;
Mean: 0.045;
Standard deviation: 0.471.
Variables: LLEBG;
Mean: 0.770;
Standard deviation: 1.93.
Crime rate variables (per 100,000 persons):
Variables: Total index crime;
Mean: 5,349;
Standard deviation: 3,170.
Variables: Murder;
Mean: 8.7;
Standard deviation: 10.9.
Variables: Forcible rape;
Mean: 38;
Standard deviation: 31.
Variables: Robbery;
Mean: 247;
Standard deviation: 317.
Variables: Aggravated assault;
Mean: 424;
Standard deviation: 391.
Variables: Burglary;
Mean: 1,034;
Standard deviation: 647.
Variables: Larceny theft;
Mean: 2,990;
Standard deviation: 1,752.
Variables: Motor vehicle theft;
Mean: 608;
Standard deviation: 593.
Other control variables:
Variables: Log per capita income;
Mean: 10.12;
Standard deviation: 0.33.
Variables: Employment-to-population ratio;
Mean: 0.631;
Standard deviation: 0.453.
Variables: Fraction of population aged 15 through 24;
Mean: 0.141;
Standard deviation: 0.027.
Variables: Fraction of population nonwhite;
Mean: 0.186;
Standard deviation: 0.136.
Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data.
[End of table]
Explanation of the Results of Our Analysis:
In this section, we discuss our regression analyses and describe how we
arrived at the results that are discussed in this report.
The Effect of COPS Expenditures on the Number of Police Officers:
To arrive at the effects of COPS expenditures on officers, we estimated
specifications for equation (1), as shown in table 16. With only the
fixed effects, the models explain more than 90 percent of the variation
in officer strength. In specification 1, we added only the COPS hiring
grant expenditures per capita to the model that contained only the
fixed effects. The effects of hiring grants are significant at the 1
percent level, and the coefficient indicates that an additional dollar
of hiring grant expenditures per capita changes the officer rate
(measured per 10,000 persons) by 0.317. In specifications 2 through 5,
we introduce various combinations of the growth rate cells, demographic
and economic conditions, and the other grant types. Across
specifications 2 through 5, the estimated coefficient on the hiring
grant variable remains fairly consistent, ranging from 0.227 in
specification 5 to 0.261 in specification 3, where the interpretation
of the coefficient is the effect of a $1 increase in per capita COPS
hiring grant on the per 10,000 person rate of officers. Specification 5
presents our preferred specification, in that it includes all of the
relevant controls. Using the coefficient on COPS hiring grant
expenditures from specification 5, we calculate the effect of $25,000
in COPS hiring grant expenditures in a given year to produce roughly
0.6 additional officers in a given year.[Footnote 77] Finally, in
addition to the COPS hiring grant expenditures, COPS MORE and LLEBG
grant expenditures also consistently predict officer strength, as
indicated by the MORE and LLEBG parameter estimates in specifications 2
through 5.
Table 16: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Officers Per Capita
on COPS Hiring Grant Expenditures and Other Outside Funds (Standard
Errors in Parentheses):
Variable: Hiring;
1: 0.317 (0.055);
2: 0.231 (0.025);
3: 0.261 (0.047);
4: 0.247 (0.028);
5: 0.227 (0.025).
Variable: MORE;
1: [Empty];
2: 0.124 (0.043);
3: 0.238 (0.090);
4: 0.159 (0.054);
5: 0.121 (0.043).
Variable: Innovative;
1: [Empty];
2: 0.0477 (0.050);
3: -0.029 (0.075);
4: 0.042 (0.054);
5: 0.047 (0.050).
Variable: Miscellaneous;
1: [Empty];
2: 1.46 (1.20);
3: 0.906 (1.30);
4: 1.13 (1.28);
5: 1.43 (1.19).
Variable: Byrne;
1: [Empty];
2: 0.001 (0.06);
3: 0.169 (0.129);
4: 0.148 (0.102);
5: 0.0003 (0.06).
Variable: LLEBG;
1: [Empty];
2: 0.172 (0.05);
3: 0.259 (0.065);
4: 0.201 (0.049);
5: 0.168 (0.049).
Variable: Federal non-COPS;
1: [Empty];
2: 0.056 (0.045);
3: 0.022 (0.066);
4: 0.033 (0.047);
5: 0.053 (0.045).
Variable: Demographic and economic covariates[A];
1: No;
2: No;
3: Yes;
4: Yes;
5: Yes.
Variable: Population weights;
1: Yes;
2: Yes;
3: Yes;
4: Yes;
5: Yes.
Variable: Growth rate cells;
1: No;
2: Yes;
3: No;
4: Yes;
5: Yes.
Variable: State-by-year fixed effects;
1: No;
2: Yes;
3: No;
4: No;
5: Yes.
Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data.
Notes: Officers per capita is measured in terms of officers per 10,000
persons; all expenditure variables are in per capita amounts. All
regression specifications include agency and year fixed effects. Bold-
face parameter estimates and standard errors indicate that a parameter
estimate is statistically significant at the 5 percent level using
robust standard errors.
[A] Demographic and economic covariates include log per capita income,
employment to population ratio, percentage of population between 15 and
24 years of age, and percentage of population that is nonwhite.
[End of table]
Effect of COPS Expenditures on Crime:
Our reduced-form estimates of the effects of COPS expenditures on
crime, the result of our estimating equation (2) appear in table 17.
This first column (labeled "Officers") repeats the results from
specification 5 of table 16. The other columns of table 17 show the
parameter estimates for the effects of hiring grants and outside funds
on the crime rate for index crimes and separately for type of index
crime (except for arson). With the exception of rape, COPS hiring grant
expenditures per capita have a negative effect on index crime rates and
the crime rate for each type of index crime. Further, while the
direction of the effect of the hiring grant variable on the larceny
rate is negative, the effect is not significant at the 5 percent level.
LLEBG expenditures have a negative and significant effect on all crime
types. The other grant fund types have a negative effect on some crime
types.
We estimated the effect of COPS hiring grant expenditures on index
crimes to be -29.19. In other words, $1 in COPS hiring grant
expenditures per capita translates into a reduction of almost 30 index
crimes per 100,000 people.
Table 17: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Crime Rates on COPS
Hiring Grant Expenditures and Other Outside Funds (Standard Errors in
Parentheses):
Variable: Hiring;
Officers: 0.227 (0.025);
Index: -29.19 (6.67);
Murder: - 0.133 (0.028);
Rape: 0.128 (0.075);
Robbery: -4.94 (1.07);
Assault: -2.77 (1.08);
Burglary: -8.01 (1.33);
Larceny: -4.18 (3.05);
Motor vehicle: -9.26 (3.44).
Variable: MORE;
Officers: 0.121 (0.043);
Index: -17.14 (6.55);
Murder: -0.083 (0.031);
Rape: 0.008 (0.063);
Robbery: -2.80 (0.919);
Assault: -1.72 (0.86);
Burglary: -2.04 (1.14);
Larceny: -6.91 (3.43);
Motor vehicle:
-3.58 (1.51).
Variable: Innovative;
Officers: 0.047 (0.050);
Index: -88.25 (17.80);
Murder: - 0.219 (.081);
Rape: -0.102 (.255);
Robbery: -8.45 (2.13);
Assault: - 9.71 (3.80);
Burglary: -17.62 (4.81);
Larceny: -23.30 (11.5);
Motor vehicle: -28.8 (6.77).
Variable: Miscellaneous;
Officers: 1.43 (1.19);
Index: -123.7 (18.79);
Murder: 1.13 (.887);
Rape: 2.37 (2.31);
Robbery: 41.2 (29.74);
Assault: - 13.56 (33.27);
Burglary: -90.61 (36.15);
Larceny: -121.8 (101.4);
Motor vehicle: 57.51 (46.98).
Variable: Byrne;
Officers: 0.0003 (0.06);
Index: 11.72 (16.03);
Murder: -.099 (.069);
Rape: -0.388 (.280);
Robbery: .270 (1.61);
Assault: 7.01 (1.33);
Burglary: -0.172 (3.87);
Larceny: 10.16 (10.14);
Motor vehicle: -5.25 (3.39).
Variable: LLEBG;
Officers: 0.168 (0.049);
Index: -73.13 (10.60);
Murder: -0.365 (.051);
Rape: -0.784 (.132);
Robbery: -13.07 (1.68);
Assault: -16.00 (2.09);
Burglary: -16.06 (2.31);
Larceny: -15.2 (3.87);
Motor vehicle: -11.59 (2.20).
Variable: Federal non-COPS;
Officers: 0.053 (0.045);
Index: 22.96 (9.14);
Murder: .027 (.038);
Rape: .082 (.090);
Robbery: 2.25 (1.07);
Assault: 1.57 (1.34);
Burglary: 1.34 (1.60);
Larceny: 10.40 (5.07);
Motor vehicle: 7.28 (1.90).
Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data.
Notes: All regressions include agency and year fixed effects, state-by-
year fixed effects, and growth rate cells. Additionally, regressions
include log per capita income, employment over population ratio;
percentage of county population aged 15 to 24; and percentage nonwhite.
Officers are per 10,000 persons; all grant expenditures are per capita
amounts. Observations are weighted by the population of the agency to
obtain the national effect. Bold-face parameter estimates and standard
errors indicate that a parameter estimate is statistically significant
at the 5 percent level using robust standard errors.
[End of table]
The Effects of Different Population Sizes across Agencies:
Given the variation in per capita COPS expenditures that occurred
across agencies serving populations of different sizes, we explored
whether COPS hiring grants had different effects on crime rates based
on the size of the population served by agencies. We stratified
agencies into four population size groups: those serving populations of
between 10,000 and 25,000 persons; between 25,000 and 50,000 persons;
between 50,000 and 150,000 persons; and more than 150,000 persons. We
found that the effect of the hiring grant was consistent across all
population categories less than 150,000, but insignificant in the
population category of more than 150,000 persons. We found that
negative effect of COPS hiring grants on index crime rates ran across
all population size categories. However, the effects of hiring grants
were largest in the 50,000 to 150,000 population category, and
insignificant in the 25,000 to 50,000 population category (table 18).
Table 18: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Index Crime Rates and
Officers Per Capita on COPS Hiring Grant Expenditures and Other Outside
Funds, by Population Size Category (Standard Errors in Parentheses):
Grant: Hiring;
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: .180 (.019);
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: -10.11 (4.74);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: .288 (.032);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: -8.79 (10.00);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: .245 (.034);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: -39.1 (10.1);
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: .095 (.074);
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: -31.5 (15.2).
Grant: MORE;
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: .043 (.021);
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: 2.86 (2.32);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: .027 (.027);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: -14.67 (13.25);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: .102 (.069);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: 3.79 (14.16);
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: .053 (.148);
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: -35.2 (24.0).
Grant: Innovative;
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: - .007 (.043);
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: - 19.94 (20.67);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: - .058 (.137);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: -28.8 (36.9);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: .036 (.052);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: -87.7 (23.3);
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: -.043 (.130);
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: -108 (48.32).
Grant: Miscellaneous;
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: - .282 (.360);
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: -379 (179);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: -.338 (.692);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: -473 (234);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: -.996 (.574);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: -145 (231);
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: 4.79 (1.97);
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: -161 (368).
Grant: Byrne;
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: -.010 (.074);
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: -7.87 (12.74);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: .440 (.516);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: -4.37 (55.52);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: -.084 (.084);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: 24.88 (29.91);
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: .173 (.153);
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: 40.2 (26.5).
Grant: LLEBG;
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: .010 (.013);
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: -23.08 (6.87);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: .032 (.046);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: -141.3 (18.28);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: -.012 (.069);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: -109 (15.6);
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: .492 (.176);
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: -90.4 (22.6).
Grant: Federal non-COPS;
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Officers: 1: .031 (.016);
Population: 10,000 to fewer than 25,000: Index: 2: - 1.177 (4.74);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Officers: 3: - .087 (.113);
Population: 25,000 to fewer than 50,000: Index: 4: 20.06 (16.79);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Officers: 5: -.016 (.096);
Population: 50,000 to fewer than 150,000: Index: 6: 36.06 (13.03);
Population: More than 150,000: Officers: 7: .045 (.127);
Population: More than 150,000: Index: 8: 11.4 (32.6).
Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data.
Notes: All regressions include agency and year fixed effects, state-by-
year fixed effects, and growth rate cells. Additionally, regressions
include log per capita income, employment over population ratio;
percentage of county population aged 15 to 24; and percentage nonwhite.
Officers are per 10,000 persons; all grant expenditures are per capita
amounts. Observations are weighted by the population of the agency to
obtain the national effect. Bold-face parameter estimates and standard
errors indicate that a parameter estimate is statistically significant
at the 5 percent level using robust standard errors.
[End of table]
Calculations of the Elasticity of Crime with Respect to Officers:
As COPS hiring grants were to be used only to hire officers, we
explored their use as an instrument to predict the effect of officers
on crime. Assuming that COPS grants were used in that way, our
preferred specification from our regressions crime on COPS hiring
grants and other outside funds would produce estimates of the
elasticity of crime with respect to officers that are shown in table
19.
To assess the degree to which the elasticities that we calculated were
in line with those appearing in the economics of crime literature, we
compared our elasticities with those estimated by Evans and Owens
(2004), Levitt (1997), Levitt (2002), and Klick and Tabarrok (2005).
Our estimates are in line with those in the literature (table 19).
Table 19: Elasticities of the Impact of Police Officers on the Crime
Rate:
Elasticity: Estimate: Average crime rate 1993;
Murder: 1: 11;
Rape: 2: 40;
Robbery: 3: 311;
Assault: 4: 484;
Burglary: 5: 1183;
Larceny: 6: 3173;
Motor vehicle: 7: 703.
Elasticity: Estimate: Levitt 1997[A];
Murder: 1: -1.98;
Rape: 2: -0.27;
Robbery: 3: -0.79;
Assault: 4: -1.09;
Burglary: 5: -0.05;
Larceny: 6: - 0.43;
Motor vehicle: 7: -0.50.
Elasticity: Estimate: Levitt 2002;
Murder: 1: -0.91;
Rape: 2: -0.03;
Robbery: 3: -0.45;
Assault: 4: 0.40;
Burglary: 5: -0.20;
Larceny: 6: - 0.14;
Motor vehicle: 7: -1.70.
Elasticity: Estimate: Evans and Owens 2005[B];
Murder: 1: -0.84;
Rape: 2: -0.42;
Robbery: 3: -1.34;
Assault: 4: -0.96;
Burglary: 5: -0.59;
Larceny: 6: -0.08;
Motor vehicle: 7: -0.85.
Elasticity: Estimate: GAO (this report);
Murder: 1: -1.04;
Rape: 2: 0.28;
Robbery: 3: --1.36;
Assault: 4: -0.49;
Burglary: 5: -0.58;
Larceny: 6: -0.11;
Motor vehicle: 7: -1.12.
Elasticity: Estimate: Klick and Tabarrok 2005;
Motor vehicle: 7: -0.30.
Elasticity: GAO aggregate elasticity, by crime category: Index: -0.42.
Elasticity: GAO aggregate elasticity, by crime category: Violent: -
0.78.
Elasticity: GAO aggregate elasticity, by crime category: Property: -
0.36.
Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data.
Notes: Estimates are derived from the parameter estimates in tables 16
and 17. The average police count per 10,000 in 1993 is 19.38. Crime is
per 100,000.
[A] Levitt's (1997) elasticities are taken directly from his regression
specification. Levitt calculates elasticities for a range of alternate
specifications that are not reported here.
[B] Evans and Owens' (2005) elasticities were evaluated at the same
mean level of crime as were GAO's.
[End of table]
In addition, Evans and Owens report aggregate point elasticities for
violent and property crimes of -0.99 and -0.26, respectively, and
Levitt reports aggregate point elasticities for violent and property
crimes of -0.44 and -0.50, respectively. Our aggregate elasticities for
violent and property crimes fall between these two sets of estimated
point elasticities.
Equations (1) and (2) depend on certain assumptions about the way that
COPS hiring grant expenditures and other outside funds affect officers
and crime. For example, the specifications reported previously only
allow the effect of the federal funds to affect crime
contemporaneously. However, it may take a certain amount of time for
the expenditures to have an effect on either officers or crime, as it
may take a certain amount of time for new officers to become fully
acclimated to a department, or to become proficient in their duties. To
explore the robustness of our findings under varying assumptions about
how COPS hiring grant expenditures could affect officers and crime, we
recalculated our elasticities after estimating our regressions under
the specifications outlined previously in table 20. We report the
elasticities that we calculated from these various regression models
(in the last three rows of the table). The elasticities for index
crimes range from -0.41 to -0.95; those for violent crimes range from -
0.76 to -1.8; and those for property crimes range from -0.35 to -0.8.
The elasticities that we report in our results all fall at the lower
end of the range of elasticities that we estimated.
Table 20: Elasticity of Violent and Property Crime with Respect to
Officers under Alternate Specifications of the Relationship between
COPS Expenditures and Crime:
Variables in specification: MORE, Innovative, and Miscellaneous COPS
expenditures;
1: Included;
2: Included;
3: Not included;
4: Not included;
5: Included.
Variables in specification: LLEBG, Byrne discretionary, and other
federal non-COPS expenditures;
1: Included;
2: Included;
3: Not included;
4: Not included;
5: Included.
Variables in specification: "Got grant" specification; : Included1: Not
included;
2: Not included;
3: Not included;
4: Not included;
5: Included.
Variables in specification: Lagged values of MORE, Innovative, and
Miscellaneous COPS expenditures;
1: Not included;
2: Not included;
3: Included;
4: Included;
5: Not included.
Variables in specification: Lagged values of LLEBG, Byrne
discretionary, and other federal non-COPS expenditures;
1: Not included;
2: Not included;
3: Included;
4: Included;
5: Not included.
Variables in specification: Demographic and economic controls;
1: Included;
2: Included;
3: Included;
4: Included;
5: Included.
Variables in specification: Growth rate cells;
1: Not included;
2: Included;
3: Included;
4: Included;
5: Included.
Variables in specification: Lagged value of Hiring grant expenditures;
1: Not included;
2: Not included;
3: Included;
4: Not included;
5: Not included.
Variables in specification: Quadratic term for Hiring grant
expenditures;
1: Not included;
2: Included;
3: Not included;
4: Not included;
5: Not included.
Variables in specification: State by year fixed effects;
1: Not included;
2: Included;
3: Included;
4: Included;
5: Included.
Variables in specification: Elasticity;
1: Not included;
2: Not included;
3: Not included;
4: Not included;
5: Not included.
Elasticity: Violent crimes;
1: -1.17;
2: -.76;
3: -1.8;
4: -.81;
5: -.76.
Elasticity: Property crimes;
1: -.51;
2: -.35;
3: -.80;
4: -.37;
5: -.35.
Elasticity: Index crimes;
1: -.61;
2: -.41;
3: -.95;
4: -.44;
5: -.41.
Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data.
Note: An X indicates that a variable was included in a specification.
[End of table]
Estimating the Net Number of Officers Paid for by COPS Expenditures:
We used our regression results to derive estimates of the net number of
officers paid for by COPS grant expenditures separately for each year.
By net number of officers, we refer to the increase in the number of
officers on the street attributable to COPS net of attrition. For
example, if at the beginning of a year, there were 100 officers on the
street, while during a year COPS grants were responsible for hiring 10
officers and 5 officers left the force, the net number of officers due
to COPS would be 5.
To obtain the total number of officer-years due to COPS expenditures,
we summed the number of officers across years. Table 21 presents the
estimated number of officers that COPS expenditures funds paid for in
each year. In column 1 we present the actual number of per capita
officers used in our regressions that generated the results in table
21. Not shown in the table, but used in the calculation of the number
of officers due to COPS expenditures are the per capita amounts of COPS
expenditures, including COPS hiring, MORE, innovative, and
miscellaneous grant expenditures. Column 2 presents our estimate of
what the per capita number of officers would have been absent the COPS
expenditures. Columns 3 and 4 show the number of officers per capita
and the percentage of officers per capita explained by COPS
expenditures. Column 5 presents our estimates of the number of officers
in each year in the sample of agencies that we analyzed that were
explained by COPS expenditures. To arrive at the number of officers in
the United States due to COPS expenditures, we weighted the numbers in
column 5 up to the U.S. population total (in column 6). On the basis of
this analysis, in year 2000, for example, when they peaked, the COPS
expenditures per capita were responsible for about 2.9 percent of the
net increase in officers in the United States, or more than 17,000
officers. Across all years, we estimate that COPS was responsible for
an increase of about 88,000 officer-years during the years from 1994
through 2001.
Table 21: Estimated Per Capita Effect of COPS Expenditures on the
Number of Officers:
Year: 1991;
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 19.32;
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 19.32;
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0;
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 0;
Number of police in: Sample: 0;
Number of police in: United States: 0.
Year: 1992;
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 19.32;
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 19.32;
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0;
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 0;
Number of police in: Sample: 0;
Number of police in: United States: 0.
Year: 1993;
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 19.38;
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 19.38;
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0;
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 0;
Number of police in: Sample: 0;
Number of police in: United States: 0.
Year: 1994;
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 19.65;
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 19.65;
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.003;
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 0.02;
Number of police in: Sample: 64;
Number of police in: United States: 84.
Year: 1995;
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 20.55;
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 20.47;
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.07;
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 0.35;
Number of police in: Sample: 1,407;
Number of police in: United States: 1,916.
Year: 1996;
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 20.71;
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 20.39;
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.32;
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 1.55;
Number of police in: Sample: 6,210;
Number of police in: United States: 8,639.
Year: 1997;
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 21.05;
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 20.54;
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.51;
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 2.42;
Number of police in: Sample: 10,085;
Number of police in: United States: 13,897.
Year: 1998;
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 21.18;
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 20.54;
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.64;
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 3.02;
Number of police in: Sample: 12,900;
Number of police in: United States: 17,630.
Year: 1999;
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 21.61;
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 21.02;
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.59;
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 2.72;
Number of police in: Sample: 12,153;
Number of police in: United States: 16,415.
Year: 2000;
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 21.15;
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 20.53;
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.62;
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 2.91;
Number of police in: Sample: 13,335;
Number of police in: United States: 17,387.
Year: 2001;
Police per 10,000 population: Number: 20.89;
Police per 10,000 population: Minus COPS funds: 20.46;
Police explained by COPS funds: Per capita: 0.43;
Police explained by COPS funds: Percentage difference: 2.05;
Number of police in: Sample: 9.535;
Number of police in: United States: 12,226.
Total;
Number of police in: Sample: 65,688;
Number of police in: United States: 88,195.
Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data.
[End of table]
Estimating the Number of Crimes Reduced by COPS Expenditures:
On the basis of our analysis of the increase in officers attributable
to COPS expenditures, we estimated the amount of crime that could be
attributable to COPS, given the estimated effect of COPS expenditures
on officers. On the basis of our analysis of the number of officers due
to COPS expenditures and our estimated elasticities of crime with
respect to officers, we can estimate the number of crimes associated
with COPS expenditures through the increase in officers attributable to
these expenditures. In table 22, we show our calculations of the
decline in crime attributable to COPS for each year, compared with the
1993 levels of crime, the pre-COPS baseline year.
Columns 1 through 3 of table 22 give the average crime rates per
100,000 persons in the agencies in our sample. Columns 4 through 6 give
the percentage change from 1993 in crime rates for each category of
crime. Columns 7 though 9 report data on officers. Column 7 reports the
growth in the officer rate from 1993 due to the change in COPS
expenditures. Column 8 presents the growth (from column 7) as a
percentage change from 1993. Columns 9 through 11 provide estimates of
the percentage change in crime rates from 1993 using the elasticities
shown in table 22. Finally, columns 12 through 14 provide the estimated
amount of change in crime rates from 1993 that arise from COPS
expenditures.
Table 22: Estimated Per Capita Growth of COPS Expenditures on Police
Officers and Crime from 1993:
Year: 1991;
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 868;
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 5519;
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 6387.
Year: 1992;
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 854;
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 5235;
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 6090.
Year: 1993;
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 846;
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 5058;
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 5904;
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.38.
Year: 1994;
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 816;
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 4973;
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 5789;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -3.55%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -1.68%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -1.95%;
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.38;
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: .02;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -.01;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -.01;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -.01;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -.09;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13: - .25;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -.34.
Year: 1995;
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 784;
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 4919;
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 5703;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -7.33%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -2.75%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -3.42%;
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.45;
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: .37;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -.29;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -.13;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -.16;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -2.08;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13:
-5.90;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -8.01.
Year: 1996;
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 723;
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 4718;
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 5440;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -14.54%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -6.72%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -7.86%;
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.70;
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: 1.65;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -1.29;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -.60;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -.70;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -9.56;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13:
-27.11;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -36.75.
Year: 1997;
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 697;
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 4593;
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 5290;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -17.61%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -9.19%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -10.40%;
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.89;
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: 2.63;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -2.05;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -.95;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -
1.11;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -15.48;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13:
-43.86;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -59.47.
Year: 1998;
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 649;
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 4313;
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 4962;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -23.29%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -14.73%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -15.96%;
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 20.02;
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: 3.30;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -2.57;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -1.19;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -
1.39;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -19.67;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13:
-55.74;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -75.58.
Year: 1999;
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 588;
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 3947;
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 4535;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -30.50%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -21.97%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -23.19%;
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.97;
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: 3.04;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -2.36;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -1.10;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -
1.28;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -19.26;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13:
-54.57;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -74.00.
Year: 2000;
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 568;
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 3799;
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 4367;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -32.86%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -24.91%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -26.03%;
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 20.00;
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: 3.18;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -2.48;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -1.15;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -
1.34;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -20.19;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13:
-57.22;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -77.59.
Year: 2001;
Average number of crimes[A]: Violent: 1: 561;
Average number of crimes[A]: Property: 2: 3845;
Average number of crimes[A]: Total: 3: 4406;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Violent: 4: -33.69%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Property: 5: -23.98%;
Percentage change in crime[B]: Total: 6: -25.37%;
Number of officers[C]: Predicted[D]: 7: 19.81;
Number of officers[C]: Percentage change: 8: 2.21;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Violent: -1.72;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Property: -.80;
Expected percentage change in crime due to COPS funds: Total: 11: -.93;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Violent: 12: -14.08;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Property: 13:
-39.90;
Change in crime per 100,000 persons: Total: 14: -54.10.
Source: GAO analysis of Uniform Crime Report, Office of Justice
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Center for
Health Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau data.
[A] Average number of crimes per 100,000 for the agency; means are
weighted by population.
[B] Percentage change in crime from 1993.
[C] Column 7 is the predicted level in the number of officers from only
a change in COPS funds from 1993; column 8 is the percentage change
from 1993.
[D] Predicted number of officers due to growth in COPS funds, from base
1993 level of officers of 19.38 per 10,000 persons.
[End of table]
[End of section]
Appendix VII: Methods Used to Assess Policing Practices:
Our objective in assessing policing practices was to determine the
extent to which COPS grant expenditures were associated with police
departments' adoption of policing activities or practices that may have
contributed to reduction in crime during the 1990s. To determine
whether COPS grants were associated with changes in policing practices,
we analyzed data from two national surveys of local law enforcement
agencies on the policing practices that they reportedly implemented in
various years from 1993 to 2000. In addition, we analyzed systematic
reviews of research on the effectiveness of policing practices in
preventing crime.
Methods to Address Changes in Policing Practices:
To address whether COPS grants were associated with changes in policing
practices that may be associated with preventing crime, we analyzed
data from the two administrations of the Policing Strategies Survey (in
1993 and 1997) and two of the four administrations of the National
Evaluation of COPS Program Survey (in 1996 and 2000). Because the
purposes of the surveys differed, each used different samples of
agencies (with some agencies appearing in both surveys). The Policing
Strategies Survey drew a sample representative of all municipal police,
county police, and county sheriff agencies in the United States with
patrol functions and with more than five sworn officers in 1992, and
the National Evaluation of COPS Program Survey drew a sample that was
representative of all law enforcement agencies believed to be in
existence in the United States that had received, or were eligible to
receive a COPS grant. Each survey provided respondents in police
agencies with lists of items that identified specific types of policing
practices, and respondents were asked whether they had implemented each
of the practices on the list. Survey responses were obtained from
knowledgeable officials within each agency, such as the police chief or
the chief's designee. The number of items related to policing practices
differed between the two surveys.
We classified items in the surveys into four categories of policing
practices corresponding to general approaches to policing identified in
the criminal justice literature: problem-solving practices, place-
oriented practices, community collaboration activities, and crime
analysis activities. Problem-solving practices call for police to focus
on specific problems and tailor their strategies to the identified
problems. Place-oriented practices include attempts to identify the
locations where crime occurs repeatedly and to implement procedures to
disrupt these recurrences of crime. Community collaboration practices
include improving citizen feedback about crime problems and the
effectiveness of policing efforts to address these problems. Crime
analysis includes the use of tools such as geographic information
systems to identify crime patterns. These tools may help an agency
support other practices for preventing crime, such as problem-solving
and place-oriented practices.
Three social science analysts with research experience in criminal
justice independently reviewed the list of policing practice items in
each survey and placed each item in one of the four categories or
determined that the item did not fit in any of the four categories.
Following initial classification, the analysts met to discuss and
address any inconsistencies in their classification of items.
After classifying practices, we created an index to represent the total
number of problem-solving, place-oriented, community collaboration, and
crime analysis practices, and we gave each agency that responded to
both waves of a survey a score equal to the number of these practices
that the agency reportedly implemented in the survey years. We also
identified, for each agency, the number of practices in each of the
four categories.
We then analyzed the levels and changes in reported practices within
each survey. Our analysis focused on the differences in levels of
practices reported by agencies that received COPS grants and those that
did not receive them. To assess the influence of COPS grant
expenditures on reported practices, we analyzed changes in reported
practices as a function of the per capita amounts of COPS dollars spent
by agencies. For agencies that did not receive COPS grants, we set
their per capita COPS expenditure amounts to zero.
A limitation of our analysis is that the surveys did not ask explicitly
about the extent to which each listed practice was implemented by law
enforcement agencies. Thus agencies that report that they had
implemented a specific practice may vary considerably, from sporadic
use of the practice among a subset of officers in the agency to more
frequent use of the practice throughout the agency.
Characteristics and Analysis of the Policing Strategies Survey:
The Policing Strategies Survey was administered in 1993 and again in
1997. The Police Foundation administered the 1993 wave of the survey,
and ORC Macro International, Inc. and the Police Executive Research
Forum administered the 1997 wave of the survey.[Footnote 78] The
sampling frame for both the 1993 and 1997 waves consisted of 11,824
local police and sheriffs' departments listed in the Law Enforcement
Sector portion of the 1992 Justice Agency list developed by the U.S.
Bureau of the Census. In constructing the sampling frame, state police
departments, special police agencies, agencies that did not perform
patrol functions, and agencies with fewer than five sworn personnel
were excluded from the larger list of all law enforcement agencies. A
total of 2,337 police and sheriffs' departments were selected to be in
the main sample for the 1993 survey, and surveys were mailed to 2,314
of them after 23 agencies were found to be out of scope before the
surveys were mailed.[Footnote 79] Follow-up mailings and facsimile
reminders were sent to nonrespondents. The overall response rate for
the 1993 survey was 71.3 percent. All of the agencies in the first
sample were then selected for participation in the 1997 survey. The
survey employed a multiphased data collection approach, using postal
mail for the first phase, followed by facsimile reminders, a second
mailing, and computer-assisted telephone interviewing for
nonrespondents. The response rate for the 1997 survey was 74.7 percent.
A total of 1,269 agencies were present in both the 1993 and 1997
surveys. The sample was a stratified random sample with probability of
inclusion varying by the number of sworn personnel (5-9; 10-49; 50-99;
and 100 or more sworn personnel).[Footnote 80]
We identified agencies in the Policing Strategies Survey that responded
to both waves of the survey and had complete data on each of the
policing practices items, and of these, we were able to link the data
from 1,188 agencies to our larger database on crime, officers, money,
and economic conditions.[Footnote 81] For comparability with the
analyses of the effects of funding on officers and crime, we limited
our analysis to those agencies serving jurisdictions with populations
of 10,000 or more persons. This resulted in usable data on 1,003
agencies.
We used the Policing Strategies Survey data to compare reported changes
in the types and levels of policing practices that occurred during the
COPS program with pre-COPS levels of practices. The analyses reported
in this appendix are weighted to adjust for the sample design effects.
The findings are generalizable to all municipal police agencies, county
police agencies, and county sheriff agencies in the United States with
patrol functions and serving jurisdictions with populations of 10,000
or more persons.
We used 38 items on policing practices from the Policing Strategies
Survey. We combined 12 practices pertaining to increasing officer
contact with citizens and improving citizen feedback into a community
collaboration index. We used 6 items on the crime analysis units within
police departments to create our index of crime analysis. We combined 8
practices pertaining to increasing enforcement activity or place
management in buildings, neighborhoods, or other specific places into
an index of place-oriented practices. And we compiled the data on 12
items that reflected organizational efforts to reduce or interrupt
recurring mechanisms that may encourage crime into a problem-solving
practices index. The classification of items from the Policing
Strategies Survey into our four indexes of types of policing practices
is shown in table 23.
Table 23: Categories of Policing Practices and Specific Items within
Each Category in the Policing Strategies Survey:
Community collaboration:
* Agency uses foot patrol as a specific assignment;
* Agency uses foot patrol as a periodic expectation for officers
assigned to cars;
* Agency uses citizen surveys to determine community needs and
priorities;
* Agency uses citizen surveys to evaluate police service;
* Patrol officers conduct surveys in area of assignment;
* Patrol officers meet regularly with community groups;
* Supervisors maintain regular contact with community leaders;
* Agency has permanent, neighborhood-based offices or stations;
* Agency has mobile, neighborhood-based offices or stations;
* Patrol officers make door-to-door contacts in neighborhoods;
* Patrol officers develop familiarity with community leaders in area of
assignment;
* Patrol officers assist in organizing community.
Crime analysis:
* Agency has a decentralized crime analysis unit/function;
* Agency has a centralized crime analysis unit/function;
* Supervisors manage crime analysis for geographic area of
responsibility;
* Geographically based crime analysis made available to officers at the
beat level;
* Patrol officers conduct crime analysis for area of assignment;
* Agency has means of accessing other city or county databases to
analyze community or neighborhood conditions.
Place-oriented practices:
* Agency designates some officers as "community" or "neighborhood"
officers;
* Agency uses building code enforcement as a means of helping remove
crime;
* Agency has landlord/manager training programs for order maintenance
and drug reduction;
* Command or decision-making responsibility tied to neighborhoods or
beats;
* Patrol officers enforce civil and code violations in area;
* Fixed assignment of patrol officers to specific beats or areas;
* Agency uses other regulatory codes to combat drugs and crime;
* Agency has beat or patrol boundaries that coincide with neighborhood
boundaries.
Problem-solving practices.
* Agency prepares agreements specifying work to be done on problems by
citizens and police;
* Specific training provided to officers for problem identification and
resolution;
* Training for citizens in problem identification or resolution;
* Patrol officers teach residents how to address community problems;
* Interagency involvement in problem identification and resolution;
* Line supervisors elicit input from officers/deputies about solutions
to community problems;
* Multidisciplinary teams to deal with special problems such as child
abuse and neglect;
* Specialized problem-solving unit;
* Patrol officers work with citizens to identify and resolve area
problems;
* Citizens work with police to identify and resolve community or
neighborhood problems;
* Organization has been redesigned to support problem solving efforts;
* Patrol officers work with other city agencies to solve neighborhood
problems.
Source: Policing Strategies Survey, 1993 and 1997.
Note: Each individual item is coded dichotomously (yes/no) to indicate
whether an agency implemented the specific practice.
[End of table]
The Policing Strategies Survey provided us with an opportunity to
assess changes in reported policing practices using a pre-COPS grant
and within-COPS grant program framework. The 1993 administration of
this survey occurred several months prior to the distribution of the
first COPS grants, while the 1997 administration occurred after COPS
grants had been made to about 75 percent of the agencies in the sample.
To implement the pre-within examination of the effects of COPS grants
on policing practices, we first compared the levels of practices in
1993 and 1997 between the group of agencies that had received a COPS
grant by 1997 and the group that had not received a COPS grant by 1997.
Second, we estimated separate regressions of the effect of the receipt
of a COPS grant and of the cumulative per capita amount of COPS
expenditures on the levels of reported policing practices. To assess
the extent to which COPS grant expenditures were associated with
changes in reported policing practices, we estimated regressions of the
changes in reported policing practices that occurred within agencies as
a function of the cumulative per capita amount of COPS grant
expenditures that they made during the years from 1994 through 1997. We
used two-factor fixed-effects regression techniques, which allowed us
to control for unobserved characteristics of agencies and underlying
trends in the adoption of policing practices. We also controlled for
economic conditions and population changes in the localities in which
the agencies were located. In addition, we used weighted regressions to
address nonresponse patterns and the probability with which the
original sampling units were drawn.
Our regression equations show that both the receipt of a COPS grant and
the amount of per capita COPS expenditures by agencies were associated
with increases in the levels of reported policing practices between
1993 and 1997. Agencies that received at least one COPS grant had
significantly larger changes in the overall number of practices than
did agencies that did not receive a COPS grant during this period.
Specifically, of the roughly 2.9 average increase in the number of
practices reported by agencies over this period, the receipt of a COPS
grant accounted for 1.8 of the increase in the reported increase in
practices. Further, when we examined our results from separate
regressions for the different categories of practices, we found that
receipt of a COPS grant was associated with significant increases in
reported levels of problem-solving and place-oriented practices, but
was not related to changes in community collaboration or crime-analysis
practices (table 24).
Table 24: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Changes in Mean
Number of Policing Practices and Category of Practices between 1993 and
1997 on whether or Not Agencies Received COPS grant between 1994 and
1997 and on Per Capita COPS Expenditures between 1994 and 1997
(Standard Errors in Parentheses):
Independent variable in model: Regression 1: Received COPS grant;
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: All 38 practices: 1.78
(.732);
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Problem- solving: .76
(.284);
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Place-oriented: .78
(.245);
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Crime analysis: .01
(.180);
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Community
collaboration: .25 (.273).
Independent variable in model: Regression 2: COPS expenditures per
capita;
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: All 38 practices: .226
(.080);
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Problem-solving: .076
(.034);
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Place-oriented: .086
(.034);
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Crime analysis: .041
(.017);
Changes in policing practices from 1993 to 1997: Community
collaboration: .023 (.026).
Source: GAO analysis of Policing Strategies Survey, Office of Justice
Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Census, and Uniform
Crime Report data:
Notes: All regressions include agency and year fixed effects and
changes in county level demographic variables (percentage of persons
aged 15 to 24, percentage nonwhite, and percentage employed) between
1993 and 1997. Observations are weighted to take into account response
rates and the probability at which the original sampling units were
drawn. Bold-face parameter estimates and standard errors indicate that
a parameter estimate is statistically significant at the 5 percent
level.
[End of table]
Our regression models further show that changes in practices were also
associated with the cumulative amount of per capita spending on COPS
grants. All other things being equal, a $1 increase in per capita
spending was associated with an increase of 0.23 policing practices. As
we found for the effects of the receipt of a grant on changes in police
practices, these regressions also showed that the level of per capita
spending on COPS grants was significantly associated with increases in
problem-solving and place-oriented practices. However, per capita
spending on COPS grants was also significantly associated with
increases in crime analysis practices.
Characteristics and Analysis of the National Evaluation of COPS Survey:
The National Evaluation of COPS Survey was conducted by the National
Opinion Research Center for the Urban Institute in its national
evaluation of the implementation of the COPS program.[Footnote 82] The
sampling frame for the survey consisted of 20,894 law enforcement
agencies believed to be in existence between June 1993 and June 1997
who had either received a COPS grant during 1995 or appeared to be
potentially eligible for funding but remained unfunded through 1995.
The list of COPS grantees was obtained from applicant records from the
grants management database from the COPS Office, and included those
agencies that had been funded from the following programs: FAST, AHEAD,
Universal Hiring Program, and MORE. The list of potentially eligible
grantees was derived from the FBI's UCR and National Crime Information
Center data files. The sampling frame was stratified by COPS grantee
status (Not Funded, FAST or AHEAD, Universal Hiring Program (UHP),
MORE), and by population (jurisdictions with populations of fewer than
50,000 persons and those with populations of 50,000 or more persons),
and agencies in each stratum were sampled at a different rate in order
to select a representative sample of law enforcement agencies.[Footnote
83] A total of 2,098 agencies were selected to be in the
sample.[Footnote 84]
Telephone interviews with agency representatives were conducted in 1996
(wave 1) and 2000 (wave 4).[Footnote 85] A total of 1,471 agencies
responded to wave 1 of the survey in 1996, for a 77 percent response
rate.[Footnote 86] In 2000, all wave 1 respondents were recontacted,
and interviews were completed with 1,270, or 86 percent, of the target
agencies.
We were able to link the data from 1,067 of the agencies that responded
to both of these waves of the survey to our larger database on crime,
officers, money, and economic conditions.[Footnote 87] For
comparability with the analyses of the effects of funding on officers
and crime, we excluded from our analysis state police agencies, and
other "special" police agencies, as well as law enforcement agencies
serving jurisdictions with populations of fewer than 10,000 persons.
This resulted in usable data on 724 agencies.
We used the National Evaluation of COPS Survey to compare levels of
practices in 1996 and 2000 between groups of agencies that received
COPS grants and those agencies that were not funded by COPS over this
period, and to assess changes in reported practices in relation to per
capita COPS expenditures. The analyses reported in this appendix are
weighted to adjust for nonresponse and the multiple counting of
agencies that received more than one COPS grant. The findings are
generalizable to all law enforcement agencies in the United States
serving jurisdictions with populations of 10,000 or more persons.
We used 19 items on policing practices from the National Evaluation of
COPS Survey, and we classified these items into the same 4 categories
of practices as we did with the Policing Strategies Survey data (table
25). However, because of the shortage of items covering place-oriented
practices, for analysis purposes we combined these 3 items with the 7
problem-solving items into one index of problem solving and place
oriented practices.
Table 25: Categories of Policing Practices and Specific Items within
Each Category in the National Evaluation of COPS Survey:
Community collaboration:
* Regular community meetings to discuss crime;
* Surveys of citizens to determine general community needs and
satisfaction with agency;
* Clean-up/fix-up projects with community residents;
* Considering neighborhood values in creating solutions or planning
projects;
* Varying styles of preventive patrol (e.g., bike patrol, walk-and-talk
patrol);
* Joint projects with local businesses to reduce disorder or petty
crime;
Crime analysis:
* Analyzing crime patterns using computerized geographic information
systems;
* Officers analyze community residents' comments to identify recurring
patterns of crime and disorder on their beats;
* Officers analyze and use crime data to identify recurring patterns of
crime and disorder on their beats.
Place-oriented practices:
* Joint projects with community residents to reduce disorder such as
loitering or public drinking;
* Beat or patrol boundaries that coincide with neighborhood/community
boundaries;
* Alcohol, housing, or other code enforcement to combat crime and
disorder.
Problem-solving practices;
* Designating certain recurring patterns as "problems" or "projects"
requiring nontraditional responses;
* Analyzing problems with business or property owners, school
principals, or property managers or occupants;
* Analyzing problems with probation/parole officers or others who
monitor offenders;
* Using agency data to measure effects of responses to problems;
* Using citizens' input to measure effects of responses to problems;
* Document problems, projects, analyses, responses, failures, and
successes in writing;
* Making sure problems stay solved.
Source: National Evaluation of COPS Survey, 1996 and 2000.
Note: Each individual item is coded dichotomously (yes/no) to indicate
whether an agency implemented the specific practice.
[End of table]
Unlike the Policing Strategies Survey, which provided a pre-COPS and a
within-COPS measure of policing practices, both observations (in 1996
and 2000) on policing practices in the National Evaluation of COPS
Survey occurred while the COPS program was making grants. This
complicates our analysis, as in 1996 there were agencies that had
already received and spent COPS funds, and to the extent that COPS
expenditures were associated with the adoption of policing practices,
the level of such practices that they reported in 1996 would reflect
their experiences with COPS grants. Some of these agencies continued to
spend COPS funds throughout the years from 1996 through 2000. However,
some of the agencies that spent COPS funds in 1996 ceased to spend them
during the intervening years before 2000. A third group of agencies
consists of those that had not received their first COPS grant in 1996
but had received a grant before 2000. This third group is analogous to
our group of agencies that received COPS grants in the Policing
Strategies survey, with the exception that while members of this group
received their first COPS grant after the first administration of the
National Evaluation survey in 1996, their practices in 1996 could have
been influenced by the COPS program indirectly. A final group of
agencies is those that did not receive a COPS grant before the 1996
administration of the survey or during the years from 1997 through
2000.
Because the effects of experience with COPS grants before and after
1996 could differ, we chose to make two types of comparisons. First, we
examined the mean changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000 for
each of the following groups of agencies: (1) agencies that made
expenditures on COPS grants in 1994 through 1996, (2) agencies that
made expenditures on a COPS grant in 1997 through 2000, (3) agencies
that made no expenditures on a COPS grant after 1996, and (4) agencies
that made no expenditures on a COPS grant in 1994 through 2000. These
mean comparisons allowed us to see whether changes in practices were
associated with receipt of a grant in either the early period of the
program (through 1996) or when the program was more fully implemented
(1997 through 2000).
We then examined whether the level of COPS expenditures between the two
administrations of the survey were associated with changes in practices
between 1996 and 2000 by regressing the change in practices on the
change in cumulative per capita COPS expenditures between the period
preceding wave 1 of the survey (1994 through 1996) and the period
following wave 1 of the survey (1997 through 2000). As with the
Policing Strategies Survey, we used two-factor fixed-effects regression
techniques, which allowed us to control for unobserved characteristics
of agencies and underlying trends in the adoption of policing
practices. We also controlled for economic conditions and population
changes in the localities in which the agencies were located. In
addition, we used weighted regression to address the complex design of
the National Evaluation of COPS Survey. We estimated separate
regressions of the effect of the receipt of a COPS grant and of the
cumulative per capita amount of COPS expenditures on the levels of
reported policing practices.
There were no significant differences in the overall adoption of
policing practices associated with changes in per capita spending on
COPS grants (table 26).
Table 26: Parameter Estimates from Regressions of Changes in Mean
Number of Policing Practices and Category of Practices between 1996 and
2000 on Whether or Not Agencies Received COPS grant Between 1997 and
2000 and on Per Capita COPS Expenditures between 1994-1996 and 1997-
2000 (Standard Errors in Parentheses):
Independent variable in model;
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: All 19 practices;
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: Problem-solving and
Place-oriented;
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: Crime analysis;
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: Community
collaboration.
Changes in COPS expenditures per capita between 1994-1996 and 1997-
2000;
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: .056 (.032);
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: .030 (.021);
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: .011 (.008);
Changes in policing practices from 1996 to 2000: .016 (.008).
Source: GAO analysis of National Evaluation of COPS Survey, Office of
Justice Programs financial, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Census, and
Uniform Crime Report data:
Notes: All regressions include agency and year fixed effects and
changes in county level demographic variables (percentage of persons
aged 15 to 24, percentage nonwhite, and percentage employed) between
1996 and 2000. Observations are weighted to take into account sample
design effects. Bold-face parameter estimates and standard errors
indicate that a parameter estimate is statistically significant at the
5 percent level.
[End of table]
Methods to Review Policing Practices:
To determine whether the certain types of policing practices may be
effective in reducing crime, we analyzed systematic reviews of research
studies on the effectiveness of policing practices.
How We Selected Studies:
We identified six studies that provided summaries of research on the
effectiveness of policing practices on reducing crime. We chose to
review studies that reviewed research, rather than reviewing all of the
original studies themselves, because of the volume of studies that have
been conducted on the effectiveness of policing practices. We reviewed
the following studies:
* Braga, Anthony. "Effects of Hot Spots Policing on Crime," Annals,
AAPSS, vol. 578 (November 2001), pp. 104-125.
* Eck, John. "Preventing Crime at Places" in Sherman, L., et al. (eds.)
Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising: A Report
to the United States Congress. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of
Justice, 1998.
* Eck, John, and Edward Maguire. "Have Changes in Policing Reduced
Violent Crime? An Assessment of the Evidence." in Blumstein, A., and J.
Wallman, eds., The Crime Drop in America. United Kingdom: Cambridge
University Press, 2000.
* Sherman, Lawrence. "Policing for Crime Prevention," in Sherman, L.,
et al. (eds.) Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's
Promising: A Report to the United States Congress. Washington, D.C.:
National Institute of Justice, 1998.
* Skogan, Wesley, and Kathleen Frydl. "The Effectiveness of Police
Activities in Reducing Crime, Disorder, and Fear," in Skogan, W., and
K. Frydl, (eds.) Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence,
Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, pp. 217-251, 2004.
* Weisburd, David, and John Eck. "What Can Police Do to Reduce Crime,
Disorder, and Fear?" Annals, AAPSS, Vol. 593 (November 2004), pp. 42-
65.
A limitation of basing our work on reviews is that we did not assess
the original studies, but rather we relied on the descriptions and
assessments as provided by the authors of the reviews. Sometimes the
reviews did not cite specific information about the strength of the
methodology of the underlying studies that were included in reviews.
How We Reviewed Studies:
We developed a data collection instrument to capture systematically
information about the methodologies of the reviews, the types of
policing practices reviewed, findings about each type of practice, and
the reviewers' conclusions about the effectiveness of a particular
practice or group of practices in reducing crime. Each research review
was read and coded by a social science analyst who had training and
experience in reviewing research methodologies. This analyst recorded,
for each practice discussed in the research review, (1) the types of
crimes against which the practices were used (e.g., all crimes, violent
crimes, property crimes, disorder); (2) whether the practice was
generally effective in reducing crime, had no effect in reducing crime,
or the impact was ambiguous; (3) whether there was displacement of
crimes away from the areas where the practices were used; and (4)
whether there were negative effects of the practices (e.g., complaints
against the police or the diversion of resources from other policing
activities). A second, similarly trained analyst then read the reviews
and verified the accuracy of the information recorded by the first
analyst. We then summarized the findings about each practice from the
data collection instruments prepared for each of the six reviews. Some
practices were discussed in only one review, while others were
discussed in more than one review.
The Research Literature Shows That Some Policing Practices May be
Effective in Reducing Crime:
Our analysis of six systematic reviews of evaluations of the
effectiveness of various policing practices in preventing crime
indicates that the current evidence ranges from moderate to strong that
problem-oriented policing practices and place-oriented practices are
either effective or promising as strategies for addressing crime
problems. For example, problem-oriented approaches that focus on
criminogenic substances such as guns and drugs appear to be effective
in reducing both violent and property crimes. And hot spots approaches-
-place-oriented approaches that temporarily apply police resources to
discrete locations where crime is concentrated at much higher rates
than occurs jurisdictionwide--have also been found to be effective in
reducing crime. However, the magnitudes of the effects of these
interventions are difficult to estimate, especially on citywide crime
rates, as the interventions that were reviewed as effective generally
were concentrated in comparatively small places. Further, the enduring
nature of these interventions is not fully understood. It is not known,
for example, how long the effects of a problem-or place-oriented
intervention persist. In addition, some of the reviews point out that
research designs undertaken to date make it difficult to disentangle
the effects of problem-oriented policing from hot spots policing. There
is suggestive, but limited, evidence that the combination of these
practices may be more effective in preventing or reducing crime than
any one strategy alone.
In contrast to the findings on problem-oriented and place-oriented
policing practices, there is little evidence in the literature for the
effectiveness of community collaboration practices--such as increasing
foot patrol, establishing community partnerships, and encouraging
citizen involvement--in reducing or preventing crime.
[End of section]
Appendix VIII: Comments from the Department of Justice:
U.S. Department of Justice:
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS):
October 4, 2005:
VIA FACSIMILE and ELECTRONIC MAIL:
Ms. Laurie E. Ekstrand:
Director, Homeland Security and Justice:
United States General Accountability Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
Dear Ms. Ekstrand:
The COPS Office thanks the GAO for the opportunity to respond to their
interim and final reports on the effects of COPS Office funding.
The findings from these studies are important. They show that COPS
grants resulted in significantly greater numbers of law enforcement
officers, are associated with increasing the community policing
capacity of law enforcement agencies and have produced significant
reductions in violent and property crimes. They support the conclusions
reached by others [NOTE 1] and correspond with what local law
enforcement leaders report. The GAO was careful and diligent in their
research, examining multiple statistical models, controlling for a
large number of relevant variables and reviewing their analyses with
the National Research Council.
Reduction in Crime:
The GAO found that COPS funding resulted in declines in the rates of
total index crimes, violent crimes and property crimes. Specifically,
the GAO found that the decline in crimes attributable to COPS
expenditures accounted for 10% of the total drop in crime from 1993 to
1998 and approximately 5% of the drop from 1993 to 2000, including
"significant reductions due to COPS expenditures for the crimes of
murder and non-negligent manslaughter, robbery, aggravated assault,
burglary and motor vehicle theft." GAO data estimates that those
reductions amounted to 200,000 to 225,000 fewer index crimes from 1993
levels, consisting of about one-third violent crimes and two-thirds
property crime.
A key finding is that these reductions in crime were found to be in
line with the amount of COPS funds expended. COPS funds amounted to
about one percent of all local law enforcement expenditures. The amount
of the reduction in crime attributable to COPS funding grants is
commensurate with and to be expected when compared to that amount. A
significant finding that cannot be overlooked is that, according to the
GAO, for every one dollar in COPS hiring grant expenditures per capita,
there was a reduction of almost 30 index crimes per 100,000 persons.
For MORE grants and innovative grant programs, the GAO estimated the
impact to be 17 and 88 crimes per 100,000, persons respectively.
It should also be noted that the GAO itself points out that the results
of the study are more likely to underestimate the magnitude of the
effect of COPS grants on reducing crime, rather than overestimate it.
In addition, the GAO selected effect sizes (elasticities) for the
impact of COPS grants on hiring by which to calculate the impact of
COPS grants on the decline in crime, that are at the lowest end of the
ranges that they estimated. Thus, under slightly different assumptions
about the statistical models, the impact of COPS grants on violent and
property crime would be even larger than the impacts reported.
Significant Increase in Officers on the Beat:
To date, the COPS Office has provided funding for 118,397 officers and
internal reports show 104,150 of these officers have been deployed to
the Nation's streets to combat crime. In addition, a comprehensive
study conducted by the Urban Institute estimates that between 1994 and
2005 the COPS Office would add between 93,400 and 102,700 additional
officers .z The GAO reports that COPS Office grants were significantly
related to increases in sworn officer levels above that which would
have been expected without these expenditures after controlling for a
large number of relevant factors. Specifically, the GAO estimates that
COPS Office grants have resulted in a minimum of 88,000 additional
officer-years, above and beyond what would have been expected in the
absence of COPS funds.
The GAO points out that it would be incorrect to interpret this total
number of officer-years as a measure of the overall increase in the
number of sworn officers that resulted from COPS funds, and is not
directly comparable to the number of sworn officers on the street as a
result of COPS funds or with estimates of the number of officers funded
by the COPS Office. However, it is important to clarify one point
regarding the number of officers funded by the COPS Office. Of the
118,397 officers that the COPS Office has funded to date, 76,339 are
for the direct hiring of community policing officers and 42,058 of them
are derived from the statutorily created MORE technology program. The
MORE technology program is designed to save officer time through the
purchase of time-saving law enforcement technology such as report
writing software, records management systems, in-car computers, etc.
This time-savings then allows officers to be redeployed to the street
to engage in additional community policing activities. Thus, the 42,058
officer equivalents[NOTE 3] funded by the MORE program would not be
expected to show up in aggregate counts of the number of officers hired
by local law enforcement such as those used by GAO in their analysis.
Significant Increase in Practice of Community Policing:
It is well accepted that community policing strategies have a strong
effect on addressing crime problems. The GAO found that agencies that
received COPS grants had larger increases in the average levels of
reported use of problem solving, place-oriented and community
collaboration practices than did the agencies that did not receive a
COPS grant. This finding is supported by a great deal of anecdotal
evidence [NOTE 4] and research that documents the acceleration in the
adoption of community policing activities as a result of COPS funding.
[NOTE 5] This has resulted in a fundamental shift in the way that law
enforcement agencies conduct business, and has resulted in a safer
America.
GAO data shows that the average level of reported use of problem-
solving practices increased by about 35 percent, as compared to about
30 percent by non-grantees. The increase in place-oriented practices
among COPS grantee was about 32 percent, as compared to about 13 among
non-grantees. Problem solving relies on developing proactive solutions
by identifying and responding to crime and social disorder problems
through systematic processes. Place-oriented practices identify
locations where crime occurs and implements procedures to disrupt those
recurrences of crime and social disorder. By collaborating with the
community, local law enforcement improves citizen feedback about crime
problems and the effectiveness of policing to address these problems.
While the GAO research does provide some evidence on the effects of
COPS grants on community policing, it is important to point out that
the aggregate counts, such as those used by the GAO in their analysis,
of the number of community policing activities that law enforcement
agencies engage in, provide only a superficial measure of the level of
community policing taking place. For example, through their COPS grant,
a law enforcement agency may have greatly increased the amount of
problem solving they engage in and, at the same time, may not have
greatly increased the absolute number of different types of community
policing related activities they conduct. These types of increases in
the quantity of a specific activity may very well represent great
enhancements in their community policing capacity but would not be
reflected in the GAO's analyses.
We thank the GAO for their careful examination of COPS Office grant
programs and for the opportunity to respond to this report.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
Carl R. Peed:
Director:
cc: Richard P. Theis:
Acting Director, Audit Liaison Office:
Justice Management Division:
William J. Sabol, Ph.D.
U.S. Government Accountability Office:
Room 6W13/Mail Stop 6Q26H:
441 G Street, NW:
Washington, DC 20548:
NOTES:
[1] Evans, W. N. and E. Owens. "Flypaper COPS" College Park, Maryland:
University of Maryland. Available online. 2005; Koper, Christopher, et
al. Putting 100,000 Officers on the Street: A Survey-Based Assessment
of the Federal COPS Program, Washington, DC: The Urban Institute, 2002;
Zhao, J. and Q. Thurman. A National Evaluation of the Effect of COPS
Grants on Crime from 1994 to 1999. Report submitted to the Office of
Community Oriented Policing Services, Washington, DC: U.S. Department
of Justice, December 2001; Zhao, J. and Q. Thurman, Funding Community
Policing to Reduce Crime: Have COPS Grants Made A Difference From 1994
to 2000. Report submitted to the Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, December 2004;
Zhao, J., M. Scheider, and Q. Thurman. 2003. "A National Evaluation of
the Effect of COPS Grants on Police Productivity (Arrests) 1995-1999."
Police Quarterly 4: 387-409.
[2] Koper, Christopher, et al. Putting 100,000 Officers on the Street:
A Survey-Based Assessment of the Federal COPS Program, Washington, DC:
The Urban Institute, 2002.
[3] The COPS Office estimates that for every 1,824 hours saved over the
course of a year, as a direct result of the technology, produces the
equivalent of one additional officer.
[4] Promising Strategies from the Field: A National Overview. Office of
Community Oriented Policing Services: U.S. Department of Justice, 2003;
Promising Strategies from the Field: Community Policing in Smaller
Jurisdictions. Office of Community Oriented Policing Services: U.S.
Department of Justice, 2003; Promising Strategies from the Field:
Spotlight on Sheriffs. Office of Community Oriented Policing Services:
U.S. Department of Justice, 2003. For more information see
www.copsreportsfromthefield.org.
[5] Johnson, C. and J. Roth, The COPS Program and the Spread of
Community Policing, 1995-2000. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute,
2003.
[End of section]
Appendix IX: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments:
GAO Contacts:
Laurie E. Ekstrand (202) 512-8777;
Nancy R. Kingsbury (202) 512-2700:
Acknowledgments:
In addition to those named above the following individuals made key
contributions to this report: William J. Sabol, Tom Jessor, David R.
Lilley, Benjamin A. Bolitzer, George H. Quinn, Jr., and Grant M.
Mallie. Others contributing included David P. Alexander, Harold J.
Brumm Jr., Scott Farrow, Kathryn E. Godfrey, Adam T. Hatton, Ronald La
Due Lake, Terence C. Lam, and Robert Parker.
[End of section]
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FOOTNOTES
[1] P.L. 103-322 (1994), 42 U.S.C. § 3796dd. The act contained other
provisions to address violent crime, such as those encouraging states
to increase the use of incarceration for violent offenders, enhancing
penalties for gang crimes, and expanding the number of federal offenses
punishable by death.
[2] Frazier, Thomas, C., "Introduction from the Director," in Attorney
General, Report to Congress: Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 2000.
[3] Zhao, J., and Q., Thurman. A National Evaluation of the Effect of
COPS Grants on Crime from 1994 to 1999. Report submitted to the Office
of Community Oriented Policing Services, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, December 2001.
[4] We reported our review of this study in GAO, Technical Assessment
of Zhao and Thurman's 2001 Evaluation of the Effects of COPS Grants on
Crime, GAO-03-867R (Washington, D.C.: June 13, 2003).
[5] Because of the limited reporting of arson, the FBI also excludes
arson from its published tables containing national estimates of index
crimes. See Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United
States, Uniform Crime Reports, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
Justice, published annually.
[6] The first survey was the National Survey of Community Policing
Strategies, and it was administered in 1993 and 1997. The Police
Foundation administered the 1993 wave of the survey, and ORC Macro
International, Inc. and the Police Executive Research Forum
administered the 1997 wave of the survey. Both surveys used the same
sampling frame. In the remainder of this report, we refer to the two
waves of this longitudinal survey as the Policing Strategies Survey.
[7] The second survey was the National Evaluation of the COPS Program
survey, which was conducted by the National Opinion Research
Corporation for the Urban Institute in its evaluation of the
implementation of the COPS program. It was a nationally representative
sample of law enforcement agencies that were contacted in 1996 and
again in 2000. In the remainder of this letter, we refer to this second
survey as the National Evaluation of COPS Survey.
[8] The Police Hiring Supplement Program was established by the
Supplemental Appropriations Act of 1993 (P.L. 103-50 (1993)). The
grants made under this program were funded by DOJ's Bureau of Justice
Assistance. In this report, when we refer to COPS grants, we include
both the grants made under the Police Hiring Supplement and the
community policing grants authorized under VCCLEA.
[9] Hiring programs authorized under VCCLEA and administered by the
COPS office included the Phase I program, which funded qualified
applicants who had applied for the Police Hiring Supplement but were
denied because of the limited funds available; COPS AHEAD (Accelerated
Hiring, Education, and Deployment) for municipalities with populations
of 50,000 and above; and COPS FAST (Funding Accelerated for Smaller
Towns) for towns with populations below 50,000. In June 1995, Phase I,
COPS AHEAD, and COPS FAST were replaced by the Universal Hiring Program.
[10] Of funds available in any fiscal year, up to 3 percent could have
been used for technical assistance or for evaluations or studies
carried out or commissioned by the Attorney General. The requirement to
allocate the funds by size of agency population applies to the
remaining funds in any fiscal year (42 U.S.C. § 3793 (a)(11)(B)). In
addition, COPS had to meet a national coverage requirement to ensure
that no state received less than 0.5 percent of total funding.
[11] Attorney General, Report to Congress: Office of Community Oriented
Policing Services, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 2000.
[12] Roth, Jeffrey, et al., National Evaluation of the Implementation
of the COPS Program, Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice,
August 2000.
[13] In a 2002 report, the Urban Institute researchers updated their
estimates of the number of officers due to COPS and reported an
estimate of a permanent increase of between 69,100 and 92,200 officers
post-2005, taking into account post-grant attrition of officers. Koper,
Christopher, et al., Putting 100,000 Officers on the Street: A Survey-
Based Assessment of the Federal COPS Program, Washington, D.C.: The
Urban Institute, 2002.
[14] Zhao and Thurman, 2001.
[15] The authors of the COPS Office-funded study revised their report
to take into account criticism presented by reviews, and in 2004, they
released their final report on the effect of COPS grants on crime. In
their final report, they updated their findings through 2000, and their
results were comparable to what they reported in their initial report.
Zhao, J., and Q. Thurman, Funding Community Policing to Reduce Crime:
Have COPS Grants Made a Difference from 1994 to 2000? Report submitted
to the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department
of Justice, July 2004.
[16] Muhlhausen, D., Do Community Oriented Policing Services Grants
Affect Violent Crime Rates (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation,
May 25, 2001).
[17] GAO Technical Assessment of Zhao and Thurman's 2001 Evaluation of
the Effects of COPS Grants on Crime, GAO-03-867R (Washington, D.C.:
June 13, 2003).
[18] The amount obligated to these agencies was 96.1 percent of the
$7.6 billion total in COPS obligations reported in the Office of
Justice Programs financial data.
[19] An officer-year is not equivalent to the total number of officers
or full-time officer equivalents hired as a result of COPS funds; nor
is it equivalent to the total number of officers funded by COPS grants.
Across years, the COPS funds may have paid for the same person. In
counting officer-years, this person would be counted one time for each
year in which we estimated that COPS funds paid for the position.
[20] Eck, John, and Edward Maguire, "Have Changes in Policing Reduced
Violent Crime? An Assessment of the Evidence." In Blumstein, Alfred,
and Joel Wallman (eds.), The Crime Drop in America, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000: p. 245.
[21] We excluded arson from our analyses because according to the FBI,
there is limited reporting of arson offenses to the UCR Program by law
enforcement agencies. Also because of the limited reporting of arson by
law enforcement agencies, the FBI does not include estimates for arson
in its published tables that contain offense estimates, including its
table 1, which reports its estimates of index crimes for the nation as
a whole.
[22] Rosenthal, Arlen M., and Lorie Fridell. National Survey of
Community Policing Strategies Update, 1997, and Modified 1992-1993 Data
[Computer file] . Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social
Research (ICPSR) version. Calverton, Maryland: ORC Macro International,
Inc. [producer] , 2002. Ann Arbor, Michigan: ICPSR [distributor] ,
2002. In the remainder of this report, we refer to the two
administrations of this longitudinal survey as the Policing Strategies
Survey.
-Title I of the 1994 Crime Act, Washington, D.C.: National Institute of
Justice, August 2000. In the remainder of this report, we refer to the
two administrations of this second longitudinal survey as the National
Evaluation of COPS Survey.
[23] The second survey was conducted by the National Opinion Research
Center for the Urban Institute in 1996 and 2000 as part of the National
Institute of Justice-funded implementation evaluation of the COPS
program. See Roth, J., et al., National Evaluation of the COPS Program-
[24] Local Law Enforcement Block Grant Program (LLEBG), as authorized
by the Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions and Appropriations Act of 1996.
(P.L. 104-134.)
[25] 42 U.S.C. § 3750 et seq. The Byrne Formula Grant Program was a
variable pass-through grant program administered by the Bureau of
Justice Assistance. States were required to pass through to local
jurisdictions amounts of funding based upon a variable pass-through
formula.
[26] In this report, COPS grants refer both to DOJ grants awarded
through the Police Hiring Supplement Program and the COPS Office's
community policing grants authorized under the Violent Crime Control
and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.
[27] We used Federal Information Processing Standards codes (or FIPS
codes), which identify named population places and are issued by the
National Institute of Standards and Technology.
[28] See Roth, Jeffrey., et al., National Evaluation of the COPS
Program--Title I of the 1994 Crime Act.
[29] Lynch, James P., "Exploring the Sources of Non-response in the
Uniform Crime Reports." Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the
American Society of Criminology Research Conference, November 19, 2003.
[30] Levitt uses three methods to estimate the bias associated with
changes in reporting practices in efforts to estimate the effects of
changes in the size of the police force on crime rates. He concludes
that ignoring this effect will lead researchers to understate the
benefits associated with increases in the size of the police force. See
Levitt, Steven D., "The Relationship between Crime Reporting and
Police: Implications for the Use of Uniform Crime Reports," Journal of
Quantitative Criminology, Vol. 14, No. 1,1998: pp. 61-81.
[31] P.L. 103-322 (1994), 42 U.S.C. § 3796dd.
[32] In this report, when we refer to COPS grants, we include both the
grants made under the Police Hiring Supplement and the community
policing grants authorized under VCCLEA.
[33] Of funds available in any fiscal year, up to 3 percent were
available for use for technical assistance or for evaluations or
studies carried out or commissioned by the Attorney General. The
requirement to allocate the funds by size of agency population applies
to the remaining funds in any fiscal year (42 U.S.C. § 3793
(a)(11)(B)). In addition, the COPS Office had a national coverage
requirement to ensure that no state received less than 0.5 percent of
total funding.
[34] 42 U.S.C. § 3750 et seq.
[35] Dunworth, Terence, Peter Haynes, and Aaron J. Saiger, National
Assessment of the Byrne Formula Grant Program, Washington, D.C.:
National Institute of Justice Research in Brief, June 1997.
[36] Local Law Enforcement Block Grant Program, as authorized by the
Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions and Appropriations Act of 1996 (P.L.
104-134).
-Title I of the 1994 Crime Act, Washington, D.C.: National Institute of
Justice Research Report, August 2000.
[37] Roth, Jeffrey A., et al., National Evaluation of the COPS Program-
[38] Attorney General of the United States, Report to Congress: Office
of Community Oriented Policing Services, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, September 2000.
[39] Davis, Gareth, et al., "The Facts about COPS: A Performance
Overview of the Community Oriented Policing Services Program,"
Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, September 25, 2000.
[40] Executive Office of the President, Performance and Management
Assessments: Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2004,
Washington, D.C.: White House, 2003.
[41] Koper, Christopher S., et al., Putting 100,000 Officers on the
Street: A Survey-Based Assessment of the Federal COPS Program,
Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, October 2002.
[42] Attorney General of the United States, Report to Congress, 2000.
[43] Wycoff, Mary Ann, Community Policing Strategies: A Comprehensive
Analysis, Washington, D.C.: The Police Foundation, November 1994.
[44] Johnson, Calvin C., and Jeffrey A. Roth, The COPS Program and the
Spread of Community Policing, 1995-2000. Washington, D.C.: The Urban
Institute, June 2003.
[45] Skogan, Wesley, and K. Frydl, "The Effectiveness of Police
Activities in Reducing Crime, Disorder, and Fear," in Skogan, W., and
K. Frydl, (eds.) Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence,
Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, pp. 217-251, 2004.
[46] Attorney General of the United States, Report to Congress, 2000.
[47] Zhao, J., and Q. Thurman, A National Evaluation of the Effect of
COPS Gants on Crime from 1994 to 1999. Report submitted to the Office
of Community Oriented Policing Services, Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of Justice, December 2001. In 2004, Zhao and Thurman
released a revised report on the impacts of COPS grants on crime
covering the years from 1994 through 2000. In their 2004 report, the
estimated effects of hiring grants were larger and the estimated
effects of innovative grants were smaller than they reported in 2001.
[48] Muhlhausen, David. Do Community Oriented Policing Services Grants
Affect Violent Crime Rates (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation,
May 25, 2001).
[49] Our review of this study was reported in GAO, Technical Assessment
of Zhao and Thurman's 2001 Evaluation of the Effects of COPS Grants on
Crime, GAO-03-867R (Washington, D.C.: June 13, 2003).
[50] Although arson is included in the crime index, the FBI reports
that it excludes arson crimes from its estimates of national crime
totals because of limited reporting of arson by law enforcement
agencies to the UCR.
[51] Evans, William N. and Emily Owens. "Flypaper COPS," College Park,
Maryland: University of Maryland. Available online at
www.bsos.umd.edu/econ/evans/wpapers/Flypaper%20COPS.pdf, 2005.
[52] This methodology was implemented by Evans and Owens (2005).
[53] The amount obligated to these agencies was 96.1 percent of the
$7.6 billion total in COPS obligations reported in the OJP financial
data.
[54] The population data that we used in our analysis came from the
UCR, and they may not reflect the population information that agencies
submitted to the COPS Office on their applications.
[55] Each year, the COPS Office was required to allocate half of its
grant funds in each year to agencies serving populations of 150,000 or
fewer persons and half to agencies covering populations of more than
150,000 persons.
[56] According to our definition, an agency reports complete crime data
if its reports to the UCR contain crime data for all 12 months within a
year.
[57] This includes total expenditures for jurisdictions with agencies
that received COPS grants as well jurisdictions with agencies that did
not receive COPS grants.
[58] Our estimate of the effect of COPS expenditures on officers is
consistent with those in the research conducted by Evans and Owns, who
used COPS hiring grants to estimate the relationship between changes in
sworn officers and crime. They estimated that each $25,000 in COPS
hiring grant expenditures produced an additional 0.7 of an officer in a
given year. Evans and Owens, "Flypaper COPS," 2005.
[59] Roth, Jeffrey, et al. National Evaluation of the COPS Program,
2000.
[60] Evans and Owens, "Flypaper COPS," 2005.
[61] Levitt, Steven D. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to
Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime: Reply" American Economic
Review, September 2002, 92(4), pp. 1244-50. Justin McCrary found that
Levitt's original estimates of the effect of officers on crime suffered
from a computation error. Levitt was able to confirm his results after
correcting the error using an alternative instrument. See McCrary,
Justin, "Do Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring Really Help Us Estimate
the Effect of Police on Crime: Comment." American Economic Review. June
2002, 92(4), pp. 1236-43.
[62] According to officials at the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the
formula for determining LLEBG grant amounts is based in part upon the
level of violent crime occurring within a jurisdiction. By comparison,
there was no requirement for COPS funding to be related to violent
crime. Therefore, without an instrument to isolate the relationship
between LLEBG expenditures and crime rates, we cannot conclude that the
estimated effects of LLEBG expenditures on crime would hold if we were
able to isolate statistically the causal direction of effects.
[63] Some of the factors associated with the crime drop have been
discussed in Blumstein and Wallman (2002). See Blumstein, A., and J.
Wallman (eds.), The Crime Drop in America, Cambridge, United Kingdom:
Cambridge University Press, 2000.
[64] For example, see: Marvell, Thomas, and Carlisle Moody.
"Specification Problems, Police Levels, and Crime Rates," Criminology
1996, 34. pp. 609-46. Eck, John, and Edward Maguire, 2000. "Have
Changes in Policing Reduced Violent Crime? An Assessment of the
Evidence." in A. Blumstein and J. Wallman, eds., The Crime Drop in
America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. pp 207-65.
[65] Sherman, Lawrence, 1998. "Policing for Crime Prevention," in
Sherman, L., et al. (eds.) Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't,
What's Promising: A Report to the United States Congress. Washington,
D.C.: National Institute of Justice, Chapter 8.
[66] Levitt, Steven D. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Help
Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime." American Economic Review, 87
(1997): 270-290.
[67] See, for example, Levitt (1997) and Marvel and Moody (1996).
[68] McCrary (2002) found that Levitt's estimation of standard errors
suffered from a computational error. Levitt (2002) was able to confirm
his results when the error was corrected by using an alternative
instrument--the number of municipal workers and firemen. McCrary,
Justin. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect
of Police on Crime: Comment." American Economic Review. June 2002,
92(4), pp. 1236-43. Levitt, Steven D. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police
Hiring to Estimate the Effects of Police on Crime: Reply" American
Economic Review, September 2002, 92(4), pp. 1244-50.
[69] Di Tella, Rafael, and Ernesto Schargrodsky. "Do Police Reduce
Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces after a
Terrorist Attack." American Economic Review. March 2004, 94(1). pp. 115-
133.
[70] Klick, Jonathan, and Alexander Tabarrok. "Using Terror Alert
Levels to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime." Journal of Law and
Economics, April 2005, vol. XLVIII.
[71] Evans, William N., and Emily Owens. "Flypaper COPS," College Park,
Maryland: University of Maryland. Available online
www.bsos.umd.edu/econ/evans/wpapers/Flypaper%20COPS.pdf, 2005.
[72] Cook, Philip, "The Clearance Rate as a Measure of Criminal Justice
System Effectiveness," Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 11, 1979, pp.
135-142.
[73] Swimmer, Eugene, "The Relationship of Police and Crime: Some
Methodological and Empirical Results," Criminology, Vol. 12, 1974: pp.
293-314.
[74] Because Byrne formula grants are passed through states to local
agencies and the methods to track the amount of Byrne dollars going to
local agencies are unreliable, we were unable to include Byrne formula
grant amounts in our models. Moreover, according to an Abt Associates
evaluation of Byrne formula grants, about 40 percent of the amounts
passed through the states to local law enforcement agencies went to
multijurisdictional task forces, thereby further complicating the task
of tracking Byrne discretionary grant expenditures to local law
enforcement agencies. See Dunworth, Terence, and Aaron J. Saiger,
National Assessment of the Byrne Formula Grant Program: Where the Money
Went--An Analysis of State Subgrant Funding Decisions Under the Byrne
Formula Grant Program, Report 1, Washington, D.C.: National Institute
of Justice Research Report, December 1996.
[75] This approach was proposed by Evans and Owens (2005).
[76] We excluded arson from our analysis, because of limited reporting
of this crime to the UCR, as indicated by the FBI. (See app. I.)
[77] Bearing in mind that the officer strength is per 10,000 in the
population, we arrive at this result by the following calculation:
(25,000)*(.227/10,000) = 0.57 officers.
[78] The 1993 survey was designed to provide information on what was
occurring and what needed to occur in the development and
implementation of community policing. The 1997 survey was designed to
provide information on the most current practices and trends in
community policing. See: A. Rosenthal et al, Community Policing: 1997
National Survey Update of Police and Sheriffs' Departments, ORC Macro
and Police Executive Research Forum, Washington D.C.: National
Institute of Justice, April 2001.
[79] Agencies were considered out of scope if they had fewer than five
sworn officers, no patrol function, or were a state police agency or
other "special" police agency.
[80] When ORC Macro and the Police Executive Research Foundation drew
the sample for the 1997 wave of the survey, they discovered that
instead of excluding agencies with fewer than five sworn officers, the
Police Foundation had used information on the agencies' total number of
employees to select the agencies for the sampling frame and had
excluded agencies with fewer than five employees. Thus some agencies
were misclassified, and some were included that should not have been.
In addition, the weights provided with the 1993 data were incorrect for
agencies with 10 to 49 employees. ORC Macro and PERF were able to
assign the appropriate weights retroactively to the 1993 sample and
were able to exclude agencies with fewer than five sworn officers.
[81] These agencies represented about 94 percent of the agencies that
responded to both waves of the Policing Strategies Survey.
[82] See Roth, Jeffrey, et al., National Evaluation of the COPS
Program--Title I of the 1994 Crime Act.
[83] Roth, et al. note that they lacked population data for 4,208
agencies in the sampling frame. For sample selection purposes, they
treated the missing agencies as a separate stratum. However, because
inspection indicated that a large majority served jurisdictions of
fewer than 50,000 persons, these agencies were analyzed in that
population category.
[84] Some agencies received more than one type of COPS grant and
appeared in more than one stratum. The analyses were weighted to take
into account the multiple probabilities of selection associated with
each grant program.
[85] The National Evaluation also conducted two other waves of
telephone interviews, in 1997 and 1998. However, for those surveys,
only subsets of the original sample were contacted.
[86] The response rate is not equal to the number of completed
interviews of the number of agencies because of the possibility of
agencies appearing in multiple strata of the sample.
[87] These agencies represented about 84 percent of the agencies that
responded to both waves 1 and 4 of the National Evaluation of COPS
Survey
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