The Economics of Crime: An Introduction to Rational Crime Analysis Book

The author devotes too much space to two topics: empirical studies performed using cross-state variation, and the "incapacitation" effect of prison, or how incarceration can drive down the crime rate by keeping prisoners from committing crimes.

Starting with the incapacitation effect, the author fails to note that any measurement of this effect will be biased, because crimes committed in prison are going to be under-reported. Crimes against other criminals are still of importance, but the author ignores this.

The reliance on cross-state variation as identification strategies for the empirical work is understandable, given the fact that the author wanted to make the book accessible to non-experts. But given the issues with such studies, the author must often point out in his book that the studies he is presenting are not often convincing. because of this, a reader may coming away from a book feeling that econ actually has very little of substance to say on the topic.

I wish the book had relied more on economic theory to try to explain some of the topics of crime. The book is best when it does this.