If you have issues viewing or accessing this file contact us at NCJRS.gov. The National Council for Crime Prevention Sweden Econometric Analysis of Crime in Sweden Perry Shapiro Harold L.Votey Jr 104530-104533 U.S. Department of Justice National Institute of Justice This document has been reproduced exactly as received from the person or organization originating it. Points of view or opinions stated in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the National Institute of Justice. Permission to reproduce this copyrighted material has been granted by National Council for Crime P~tion Sweden to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS). Further reproduction outside of the NCJRS system requires permis­ sion of the copyright owner. 1 I .", Stockholm, October 1986 Report 1986:3 The National Swedish Council for Crime Preven­ tion (BrottsfOrebyggande rfidet) established 1974, is a government agency under the Ministry of Justice. The Council is headed by a board of 18 persons appointed by the government and repre­ senting a wide range of important functions in the community. The Council has an office with a permanent staff. The address is: BrottsfOrebyggande radet Atlasmuren 1 S-l13 21 STOCKHOLM, Sweden Telephone: (Stockholm) 08-229780 The Council publishes reports in Swedish and English. The Council also issues abstracts on crime and correction in Sweden. This report can be ordered from Liber Forlag Kundtjanst S-162 89 STOCKHOLM, Sweden This is a research report. The views expressed are those of the authors alone. ISBN 91-38-09510-6 Omslag Forlagsateljen Produktion AB Allmiinna Fotlaget Tryck Gotab, Stockholm 1986 Table of Contents PREFACE 5 SUMMARY OF RESEARCH PROGRESS 7 THE ALLOCATION OF POLICE MANPOWER ACROSS COUNTIES IN SWEDEN .. , /0 1-S,3.;' .. 9 Harold L. Votey, Jr SUBSTANCE ABUSE AND CRIME IN SWEDEN: ECON­ OMETRIC ESTIMATES OF LINKAGES 11745:3,;(. 23 Harold L. Votey, Jr MORAL COMPLIANCE, PRIVATE SELF-INTEREST AND EXPOSURE TO THE LAW: THE RESPONSE OF SWEDISH DRIVERS TO DRUNKEN DRIVING CON- TROLS .......... '1(;~S3')' 35 Perry Shapiro & Harold L. Votey, Jr APPENDIX ........ 54 3 Preface Beginning in 1978 the Swedish National Council for Crime Preven­ tion (BRA) has provided support to me for econometric research on a number of aspects of Swedish c.rime. My involvement began as a consequence of a general interest in Scandinavian effective,ness in controlling the consequences of drunken driving. The investigation into these matters in Sweden and in Norway led to a subsequent interest in investigating crime more generally in Sweden. I sought to conduct analyses that involved econometric techniques being perfec­ ted in the U.S. and elsewhere to reinvestigate economic models of choice in criminal behavior. Those models, as do those of the classical criminological theory, trace their roots to Bentham, Beccaria and the Utilitarians. I had gained considerable experience in investigating such hypotheses with a variety of data bases in the U.S. and was intrigued with the possibility of conducting similar studies with Swedish data. In particular, I was struck with the similarities in Swedish and American law and treatment of criminals, with sufficient variation to make the studies interesting in their own right. I was also very much impressed with the detail provided in 'official Swedish crime records and their accessibility through the Swedish National Central Bureau of Statistics. The primary data collection for the subsequent series of projects began the two summers, 1979 and 1980, in Stockholm, where I was assisted by my wife, using the facilities of BRA. The second visit coincided with the 8th International Conference on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety in which a paper was presented first making use of Swedish data from this project. Econometric analysis was conducted within the facilities of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Visits to BRA followed in 1981 and 1984 when seminars were presented with initial results of studies underway using Swedish data. Santa Barbara, September 1986 Harold L. Votey, Jr Community and Organization Research Institute University of California/Santa Barbara 5 Summary of Research Progress BRA first published the author's econometric analysis of Swedish crime, its causes and control in Kiihlhorn & Svensson (1982). That work was extended and published in greater technical detail in Smith & Witte (1983). Subsequently, support for continuation and exten­ sion of that research has been provided in part by the US National Institute of Justice, and the US National Science Foundation in connection with studies pursuing those agencies' own research agendas as well as by the University of California in its role of providing research support to its faculty. An extensive list of publications has been the consequence, all of which owe much to the initial interaction with BRA. The results are of interest to sweden in that they reveal much about Swedish crime and its control that was previously known. They are of interest to the research community beyond Sweden for the way they provide confirmation of hypotheses tested elsewhere and the opportunity to test further the validity of new research techniques for studying crime and its control. The papers in this volume were written especially for BRA, largely as a consequence of questions arising out of seminar presentations here. The first paper, "The Allocation of Police Manpower Across Counties in Sweden", deals with questions raised about assumptions in earlier modeling of Swedish crime control about the way crime control resources have been allocated across Swedish jurisdictions. The second, "Substance Abuse and Crime in Sweden", makes use of the same econometric framework to evaluate hypotheses regarding the influence of drug and alcohol abusers on crime in Sweden. The third, "Moral Compliance, Private Self-Interest and Exposure to the Law", with Perry Shapiro, draws on joint extensive research conducted to develop and test alternative models for explaining drunken driving behavior and its control. An appendix lists publications that trace their roots to the interaction begun in 1978. 7 J The Allocatiol!! of Police Man­ power Across Counties in Swe .. den ~ Harold L. Votey, Ir 9 Acknowledgements This research has benefited by comments provided by attendees to seminars presented to the National Council for Crime Prevention on August 23, 1981 and on July 18, 1984. In particular, CC' '3ments by Carl-Gunnar Janson, Johannes Knutsson, Eckart Kiihlhorn, Ernst Nilsson and Torbjorn Thedeen have been most helpful. Support for this research has been provided by the National Council for Crime Prevention, Stockholm and by the Committee on Research, Acade­ mic Senate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A great number of individuals and organizations in Sweden have contributed generously in helping to put together the data for this research from many official and private sourceF- in Sweden. Of particular help in that connection have been Goran Hedstrom, Torbj6rn Israelson, Eckart KiihlhoIll, Ernst Nilsson, Peter Simon and Henrik Tham. 10 Introduction This paper examines the allocation of police manpower across Swedish counties and investigates the evidence regarding the criteria used for the allocation. There are a number of reasons why it might be important to understand the process by which police manpower allocation takes place. One is that in order to conduct credible evalutive research concerning deterrence effects of law enforcement and sanctions against criminals, it may be critical to the evaluation to make appropriate assumptions about how the level of criminal justice manpower is determined. This is one of the issues raised by Blumstein et al. (1978) in their evaluation of deterrence studies in the U.S. Another is that, if evaluative studies are to be pursued to their logical ends with respect to analyzing law enforcement efficiency, one must be able to model the allocation process rep.listically. The latter concern can be divided into a number of subsidiary concerns. These include whether law enforcement resources are appropriately allo­ cated among sub-components of the criminal justice system, whether appropriate emphasis is placed on the various classes of crime, 11 whether allocations among communities are appropriately balanced, and whether policymakers spend sufficient resources on crime control as contrasted with other logical targets for the use of public funds. One might assume that the obvious approach to discovering the criteria used is simply to ask the authorities how they balance expenditures among all of these demands. In a complex bureaucracy it is not that simple, however. For example, there may be political reasons why authorities are reluctant to divulge the process. It may be felt that increased public input into the process may make it more difficult rather than more effective. But more than that, the problem is simply that there is no single point in the system at which all. allocative decisions are made, nor should there be. Most often, authority is decentralized in order to place those individuals in close touch with a set of problems in a position to make judgements about how resources should be used. Under such circumstances it may well be that statistical inference can tell us as much or more about the factors influencing a set of decisions as one might learn from extensive questioning of authorities. In the case of law enforcement manpower, discussion with authorities and cursory investigation suggests that per capita manpower alloca­ tions across counties in Sweden are simply based on the population density of respective counties. However, detailed investigation seems to indicate a much more complex process in which marginal adjustments are made systematically to that initial allocation. Such a process could be consistent with optimal planning in which the implicit objective is to minimize social costs of crime. This is not to suggest that what is revealed here is an explicity formalized plan to yield social cost minimization with respect to crime.