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Past research indicates that when professional sports games are played, crime increases. Yet, little is known about how playoff games affect crime. As many criminal events associated with sports games, such as riots, occur during playoff games, this is an important gap in the literature. Using data from 15 National Hockey League (NHL) teams from 2013 through 2019, we examine how assault, disorder, and property crimes change when playoff games are played at home relative to when they are played away. We find that during home games there are 7% more disorder crimes and 4% more property crimes than during away games which suggests that city responses to playoff hockey games should prioritize crime reduction strategies to improve public safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What accounts for the steady decline in misdemeanour arrest rates in the United States following their peak in the mid-1990s? This article links the fluctuation in low-level law enforcement to changes in the budget and staffing resources cities devoted to policing. This materialist explanation contrasts with accounts that emphasize policy changes like the adoption of community policing. Dynamic panel regression analyses of 940 municipalities indicate low-level arrest rates declined most in places that reduced their police expenditure and personnel, net of crime and other controls. The adoption of community policing was unrelated to misdemeanour arrests. Findings suggest lawmakers should consider how increasing police budgets or police force sizes will likely be accompanied by increases in misdemeanour arrests and their attendant harms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Door locks are a ubiquitous form of security to control access to a building with the goal of reducing crime there. However, research on door locks is often limited by methodological issues and primarily focuses on residential or commercial locations. This paper assesses the impact of card reader door locks on school buildings on an urban university campus. Using a difference-in-differences approach, this paper estimates the effect of card reader locks on crime in buildings. The results indicate that the locks do not significantly affect crime within buildings on a university campus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the effect of marijuana on domestic violence often suffer from endogeneity issues. To examine the effect of marijuana decriminalization and medical marijuana legalization on serious domestic assaults, we conducted a difference-in-differences analysis on a panel dataset on NIBRS-reported assaults in 24 states over the 12 years between 2005 and 2016. Assaults disaggregated according to situation and extent of injury were employed as dependent variables. We found that while the total number of assaults did not change, decriminalization reduced domestic assaults involving serious injuries by 18%. From a harm reduction perspective, these results suggest that while the extensive margin of violence did not change, the intensive margin measured by the seriousness of assaults were substantially affected by decriminalization. This result may be partially explained by reductions in offender alcohol intoxication and weapon-involved assault. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]