Three Essays in Law and Economics

Three Essays in Law and Economics by Daniel David Bonneau This dissertation investigates three relevant topics in law and economics literature. The first chapter explores the effectiveness of a crime prevention policy in Detroit, Project Green Light. The second chapter empirically evaluates the dominant theory of plea bargaining in economics, using police officer deaths as plausibly exogenous variation to the sentencing process. The final chapter examines the impact of new public prison openings in the state of Florida. The first chapter, ”Does Increased Surveillance Deter or Displace Crime? An Evaluation of Detroit’s Project Green Light” considers the direct and indirect effects of Detroit’s Project Green Light. This initiative began in 2016 and was aimed at reducing crime around high-risk businesses. The approach to combating crime is through the installation of CCTV camera systems with a direct feed into a real-time crime center for rapid notification of crimes. Additionally, all calls from these participating businesses were designated priority 1, the highest designation for the police department, with the intention of decreasing response times to these suspected crimes. To evaluate this program, geo-located crime and calls for service data are utilized. Additionally, the effects were considered at the business-block level, as well as throughout traditional buffer zones. Reductions in crime can be found in the business block that housed the green light, with a potential diffusion of benefits to their immediate neighbors. Using calls for service produces mixed results and suggest that there may be an increase in proactive policing within these areas. Lastly, response times do appear to decrease significantly. In the second chapter, ”Bargaining in the Shadow of the Trial? Deaths of Law Enforcement Officials and the Plea Bargaining Process” Dr. Bryan McCannon and I empirically test the dominant theory of plea bargaining in the economics literature. This theory is difficult to test, however, due to the endogeneity of reforms and the private information that may be driving the bargaining process. We contribute by using plausibly exogenous variation using deaths of law enforcement officials on a data set of all felonies processed from 2004-2017 within the state of Florida. We argue that deaths of law enforcement officials are salient to the potential voter base, thus increasing the probability of conviction at trial, funneling back into the plea bargaining process through harsher plea bargained sentence agreements. If this is the case, it would be evidence in support that plea bargaining occurs in the shadow of the trial. This is found. Considering only cases that were already in process at the time of a death, and located within the same county as the death, we find a 13% increase in plea bargaining sentences on average. Numerous alternative specifications were conducted to evaluate heterogeneous effects, in which we find more salient (gunfire deaths, expansive newspaper coverage, and public dedications) produce stronger effects. Lastly, to verify this occurs through the jury and not solely through changes in the attitudes of prosecutors or judges, we find that results are only present in reference to jury trials, with no effect for bench trials. These results provide suggestive evidence of the validity of a widely used framework with which economists evaluate the criminal justice system. The third chapter, “If You Build It, We Will Make Them Come: The Impact of New Prison Construction on the Likelihood of Incarceration” evaluates the opening of new public prison facilities in Florida on the likelihood defendants face incarceration. Exploiting spatial and temporal variation in each case, I find a nine-month window of increased incarceration rates for those defendants most likely to face incarceration at the new prison. This effect is more pronounced in plea bargained cases, suggesting that prosecutors may be shifting their behavior during this time. This contributes to a growing literature that is investigating the mechanism through judges. To my parents, David and Nancy; and my brother, Derek. Your influence as role models, and your unwavering support of my aspirations have made this possible.