The Effect of Punishment Regimes on Crime Rates

Description

Criminologists are interested in the effect of punishment regimes on crime rates. This has been studied using aggregate data on 47 states of the USA for 1960 given in this data frame. The variables seem to have been re-scaled to convenient numbers.

Usage

UScrime

Format

This data frame contains the following columns:

M

percentage of males aged 14-24

So

indicator variable for a southern state

Ed

mean years of schooling

Po1

police expenditure in 1960

Po2

police expenditure in 1959

LF

labour force participation rate

M.F

number of males per 1000 females

Pop

state population

NW

number of nonwhites per 1000 people

U1

unemployment rate of urban males 14-24

U2

unemployment rate of urban males 35-39

GDP

gross domestic product per head

Ineq

income inequality

Prob

probability of imprisonment

Time

average time served in state prisons

y

rate of crimes in a particular category per head of population

Source

Ehrlich, I. (1973) Participation in illegitimate activities: a theoretical and empirical investigation. Journal of Political Economy, 81, 521–565.

Vandaele, W. (1978) Participation in illegitimate activities: Ehrlich revisited. In Deterrence and Incapacitation, eds A. Blumstein, J. Cohen and D. Nagin, pp. 270–335. US National Academy of Sciences.

References

Venables, W. N. and Ripley, B. D. (1999) Modern Applied Statistics with S-PLUS. Third Edition. Springer.