Crime and the Depenalization of Cannabis Possession: Evidence from a Policing Experiment

By Jerome Adda, Brendon Mcconnell, Imran Rasul. Journal of Political Economy, 2014

130 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We evaluate the impact on crime of a localized policing experiment that depenalized the possession of small quantities of cannabis in the London borough of Lambeth. We find that depenalization policy caused the police to reallocate effort toward nondrug crime. Despite the overall fall in crime attributable to the policy, we find that the total welfare of local residents likely fell, as measured by house prices. We shed light on what would be the impacts on crime of a citywide depenalization policy by developing and calibrating a structural model of the market for cannabis and crime.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/428217fe7a7c47b41cda12c0d4c72140a9cfc19b

Citations in the corpus

• Decriminalizing Indoor Prostitution: Implications for Sexual Violence and Public Health (2014, unknown): “The freeing up of police personnel and equipment to other areas could ultimately cause other crime rates like rape to decrease (Draca et al., 2011; Adda et al., 2014).”