In 1995, El Salvador had an intentional homicide rate of 139 per 100,000, the highest in the world and one of the highest rates recorded in modern history. Like all educated middle-class Americans, my core understanding of urban crime comes from The Wire, so for comparison, when the show took place, the homicide rate in…
A new paper in The Economic Journal, published by by Oxford University Press, indicates that the presence of adult entertainment establishments may decrease sex crimes, significantly. The role of entertainment establishments (strip clubs, escort services, adult bookstores, and adult movie theaters) in communities is controversial. Citizens often view them as centers of vice. While some have suggested that these clubs and services may improve behavior if people use them instead of committing sex crimes, such establishments may reinforce the view of women as objects, leading to more violence against them. This paper exploits a unique data set of high frequency precinct level crime information from New York City, due to its controversial stop-and-frisk policing policy. The researchers here constructed a new data set to combine the exact location of not-self-reported sex crimes with the day of opening and exact location of adult entertainment establishments in New York City. The crime data includes hourly information on crimes observed by the police, including sex crimes. The data set covered the period from January 1, 2004 to June 29, 2012.
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