Abstract:
A shorter and simpler criminal procedure may aspect crime rates by increasing the
perceived severity of punishment and by inducing a reallocation of police enforcement
resources. I investigate the impacts of a criminal procedure reform in the Iran that allowed
certain less serious effect to be prosecuted via a simplified (fast-track) procedure. The
share of cases actually prosecuted via the fast-track procedure varied substantially across
police districts and openness, which provides the basis for the identification strategy.
The shorter procedure had very deferent effects on ordinary crimes reported by the
victims and on crimes that are identified mostly by the enforcement effort of the police.
Specifically, it led to a substantial increase in the number of recorded criminal offenses
associated with driving. This finding is best rationalized by a reallocation of police
enforcement effort towards crimes that have low enforcement costs. I also find some but
rather weak evidence of a deterrent effect on burglary and embezzlement.
Machine summary:
2017 Accepted 20 Aug. 2017 Published 16 Nov. 2017 ABSTRACT A shorter and simpler criminal procedure may aspect crime rates by increasing theperceived severity of punishment and by inducing a reallocation of police enforcement resources.
The share of cases actually prosecuted via the fast-track procedure varied substantially across police districts and openness, which provides the basis for the identification strategy.
The share of cases actually prosecuted via the fast-track procedure differed substantially across districts and offenses.
It contains information on the number of offenses reported to the police, clearance rates, share of cases prosecuted via the fast-track procedure, and average case durations.
The first-stage regressions estimate (offense-by-offense) the log of average case duration as a function of the share of fast-track cases, socio-economic controls, and district and year fixed effects.
These coefficients imply that a full adoption of the fast-track would increase the number of recorded obstruction and driving- under-influence crimes by 83 and 33 percent, respectively.
The results from both IV and reduced form regressions provide very strong evidence that a reduction in case duration led to an increase in the number of driving-related offenses that are most often discovered via the enforcement activity of the police.
The number of two particular offenses that are recorded mostly through the police enforcement effort - obstruction of an official order and driving under the influence - rose relatively more in districts with high fast- track adoption.
The IV estimates of the reallocation effects imply that a 10- percent reduction in case duration increases the recorded crime rate by 2.