UScrime {MASS}R Documentation

The Effect of Punishment Regimes on Crime Rates

Description

Criminologists are interested in the effect of punishment regimes on crime rates. This has been studied using aggregate data on 47 states of the USA for 1960 given in this data frame. The variables seem to have been re-scaled to convenient numbers.

Usage

data(UScrime)

Format

This data frame contains the following columns:

M
percentage of males aged 14-24
So
indicator variable for a southern state
Ed
mean years of schooling
Po1
police expenditure in 1960
Po2
police expenditure in 1959
LF
labour force participation rate
M.F
number of males per 1000 females
Pop
state population
NW
number of nonwhites per 1000 people
U1
unemployment rate of urban males 14-24
U2
unemployment rate of urban males 35-39
GDP
gross domestic product per head
Ineq
income inequality
Prob
probability of imprisonment
Time
average time served in state prisons
y
rate of crimes in a particular category per head of population

Source

Ehrlich, I. (1973) Participation in illegitimate activities: a theoretical and empirical investigation. Journal of Political Economy, 81, 521–565.

Vandaele, W. (1978) Participation in illegitimate activities: Ehrlich revisited. In Deterrence and Incapacitation, eds A. Blumstein, J. Cohen and D. Nagin, pp. 270–335. US National Academy of Sciences.

References

Venables, W. N. and Ripley, B. D. (1999) Modern Applied Statistics with S-PLUS. Third Edition. Springer.


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