Improving Police Services in New Orleans’ French Quarter
Introduction
The French Quarter Task Force (FQTF) began in 2015 as a privately-funded way to increase police presence in the French Quarter, a popular tourist neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana. Off-duty police officers were hired to patrol the French Quarter in all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. The private funder oversaw FQTF operations from March 23, 2015, through June 21, 2015 (the “private management period”) before the program was handed to the public sector (the “public management period”). During the private management period, there were strict monitoring and incentive strategies implemented, such as dismissing underperforming officers, tracking patrol officers through GPS, and hiring a private surveillance firm to monitor the officers 24/7. These practices were not implemented during the public sector period.
Cheng and Long (2018) employs a difference-in-differences strategy to examine the changes in crime after the implementation of the FQTF. The paper focuses on crimes believed to be most affected by increased police presence: robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and theft (collectively referred to as “susceptible crimes” in the literature). Crimes reported between 2013-2014 serve as a pre-period.
The paper finds the FQTF significantly reduced rates of susceptible crime in New Orleans’ French Quarter neighborhood. The paper finds there were 12.13 fewer robberies per quarter (a 37% decline), 3.4 fewer aggravated assaults per quarter (a 17% decline), and 37.74 thefts (a 13% decline). Other susceptible crimes, such as burglaries, have large estimated declines but are not precisely estimated.
MVPF = 5.0
Net Cost
Cheng and Long include in their measurement of cost officer salaries, administrative fees, and the cost of hiring an external surveillance firm in the private management period. The paper estimates these direct costs to be $0.22 million per quarter, or $0.88 per year.
Willingness to Pay
Cheng and Long (2018) estimate the willingness to pay as being equal to the social cost of the reduced crime. The paper uses total cost of crime values from McCollister et al. (2010), which estimates the social costs of each individual robbery, aggravated assault, and theft to be $42,310, $107,020, and $3,532, respectively.
The overall willingness to pay for the reduction in crime is then roughly $1 million per quarter ($42,310 * 12.13) + ($107,020 * 3.4) + ($3,532 * 37.74).
MVPF Summary
The MVPF of the FQTF over the full analysis period is ($1.01 million / $0.22 million) = 4.6. In the paper, this is rounded to 5.
To calculate the MVPF in the mode of Hendren and Sprung-Keyser (2020), one would split the total costs from McCollister et al. (2010) into beneficiaries in society and the changes in government spending. The beneficiaries from society would continue to be included in the willingness to pay, while the changes in government spending would be included as a fiscal externality in the denominator.
Making that change yields a willingness to pay estimate of $750,202 and a net cost estimate of -$85,754, implying the reduction in crime yields net government savings. This suggests an infinite MVPF.
References
Cheng, Cheng, Wei Long (2018). “Improving police services: Evidence from the French Quarter Task Force.” Journal of Public Economics, 164(2018): 1- 18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.05.002.
McCollister, Kathryn, Michael French, and Hai Fang (2010). “The cost of crime to society: New crime-specific estimates for policy and program evaluation.” Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 108(1-2): 98-109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2009.12.002.
Policy Features
- Category
- Criminal Justice
- Beneficiary Type(s)
- Adults
- Country of Implementation
- United States
- Year of Implementation
- 2015
- Empirical Method
- Difference in Differences
- Research Type
- Primary
- Peer Reviewed
- Yes
- MVPF Publication Link
- doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.05.002