Fire Alarms for Police Patrols: Evidence on an SMS Tip Line for Crime Reporting

• In Event: Aiding and Abetting: The Role of Non-Combatants in Conflict Zones

Abstract

Police departments rely on citizens to communicate about problems so that they can distribute resources efficiently. In developing contexts, search costs like expensive phone calls or travel time to a police station often discourage citizens from reporting information to the police. We experimentally evaluate an SMS hotline which reduces citizens’ costs of sharing information with authorities in a rural province of the Philippines. To clearly identify the mechanisms linking this “community policing” initiative with public safety, we compare the hotline against both a control and a community policing initiative designed to increase trust but not reduce search costs. Relative to both other conditions, civilians living in areas with the hotline were significantly more likely to report crimes to the police. The initiative had real implications for public safety: areas that received the hotline treatment experienced significantly lower levels of insurgent activity. However, we observed no effect of the treatment on ordinary crime like theft or drug-dealing, and the hotline had a negative effect on citizens’ satisfaction with the police. We speculate that the hotline induced greater reporting of all public safety issues, but that the police took action only on issues which they prioritized, in this case insurgency. Our findings demonstrate the impact of search costs in interrupting citizen-state information flows and public goods provision, while providing evidence for a low cost solution to those costs. At the same time, they reinforce the notion that public safety depends on action by both citizens and the authorities, and that either by itself is insufficient.

Authors

• Dotan A Haim, Florida State University

• Matthew Nanes, Saint Louis University

• Nico Ravanilla, University of California San Diego