From the Maryland Population Research Center
"Crime is highly concentrated in a small number of places, times, and repeat offenders, following a power-law distribution in which a small share of individuals and locations accounts for a disproportionate share of harm. Conventional discussions of crime control overlook that the most consequential spikes arise from tail risks—the small group of offenders at the extreme end of the distribution. Drawing on deterrence theory, simulations of repeat offending, and the gambler’s ruin process, this talk shows that modest increases in the certainty of sanctions for high-rate offenders can generate substantial reductions in crime. Effective policing should therefore be understood as a form of tail risk hedging, using scalable and sustainable interventions to stabilize public safety. By contrast, alternatives to policing are highly variable in quality, difficult to scale, and limited in their ability to control repeat offending, leaving communities more vulnerable to volatility in crime. Effective policing should be viewed as a form of risk management that protects against these tail risks."
John MacDonald is Professor of Criminology and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
See complete details and register on the MPRC website
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