On the relationship between police force presence and crime in Mexico: A spatial analysis

ABSTRACT

This study seeks to contribute to the literature on the deterrence effect of police on crime by looking at the dynamic between police force presence (number of officers) and criminal behavior on a state level in Mexico. In order to do this, we estimate a panel data pooled ordinary least-squares model, a spatial Durbin model, and a spatial error model to analyze the spatial distribution of police force presence and the behavior of two categories of robberies – street and non-street – between 2009 and 2017. Our results show a positive relationship between the number of assigned officers and criminal behavior; however, this correlation does not derive from either a transversal or temporal relationship between states. This result has implications for state security policies as it suggests that the deployment of police in high crime areas, although responsive in character, has no particular impact on criminal behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Police force presence
• crime rate
• spatial analysis
• mexico

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gustavo Fondevila

Dr Fondevila is a professor at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE). National Researcher of the National System of Research and of the National Council of Science (CONACYT). Last book published: Prisons and Crime in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (with Marcelo Bergman). Author of several contributions in international specialized journals.

Carlos Vilalta

Dr Vilalta is a professor at the Center for Research in Geospatial Information Sciences (CentroGeo) in Mexico City. He received his PhD in Urban Studies from Portland State University and his master’s degree in urban studies from El Colegio de México (Colmex). He is a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI) and has beena visiting scholar at Cambridge University, McGill University, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Missouri in St. Louis, Houston, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ricardo Massa

Dr Massa is the Coordinator of the Simulation Unit of the National Laboratory of Public Policy and research associate at the CONACYT-CIDE, Interdisciplinary Program for Studies in Regulation and Economic Competition (PIRCE) in Mexico City. He holds a PhD in financial sciences from the EGADE Business School and a BA in economics from Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico City Campus. He specializes in econometric methods applied to criminal studies and has been a visiting research fellow at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and at the Center for US-Mexican Studies of the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) at the University of California, San Diego.