Stop and Frisk Policy Effectiveness Revisited: A Time Series Analysis

• In Event: Roundtable: Policing - Stop and Search

Abstract

About ten years after the Stop and Frisk policy came into effect in the New York City, the New York Police Department had begun to restrain their employment of it to deter both misdemeanors and more serious offenses. The number of pedestrian stops by the police in NYC had dropped by roughly 90% in 2015 compared to 2011 when the number peaked. While the policy basically came to a stop, the debate surrounding its effectiveness on deterring crime has rather been reemerging. To further understand the policy effect, this article adopts the intervention time series analysis to examine felony trends before and after the retreat of the stop and frisk policy. Analysis is conducted using monthly data on the 7 major felony offenses released by the NYPD for the New York City as a whole and for each of the five boroughs individually. Results suggest that the effectiveness of the policy varies across geographic areas and by the type of crime studied.

Author

• Yunhan Zhao, SUNY Albany