Low Priority Laws and the Allocation of Police Resources

There is an ongoing literature in economics examining the deterrent effect of police officers on criminal activity. However, this literature tends to focus on the aggregate number of officers employed versus the relative allocation of an officer's time. In this paper, we examine how the reallocation of police resources affects police behavior and criminal activity using the adoption of low priority initiatives by some jurisdictions. Low priority initiatives mandated that minor marijuana possession offenses be the lowest enforcement priority for police officers. We first test whether adoption of the initiative decreased the arrest rate for minor marijuana possession offenses. If police officers devote fewer resources towards minor marijuana possession crimes, then more resources will be available to deter and solve more serious crimes. This would suggest that if misdemeanor marijuana arrest rates decreased, there may be a reduction in crime rates or clearance rates for more serious crimes, such as murder or robbery. Using city-level data from California, we find that those jurisdictions that adopted low priority laws experienced a reduction in arrests for misdemeanor marijuana offenses. However, we do not find a significant effect of enacting a low priority initiative on the crime rate or clearance rate of more serious felony crimes. Our findings are important for local policy makers, as we do not find evidence that the initiatives had an impact on more serious crimes as was intended by the legislation.