Use of Force and Home Safety

• In Event: Firearms and Violence

Abstract

Subsequent to Florida’s enactment of the first castle doctrine law in 2005, no less than 22 additional states have passed some sort of legislation that allows civilians to use deadly force to protect their property from violent and non-violent offenders (Boots et al. 2009; Levin 2010). Given the pervasiveness of these legislative acts, it becomes increasing important to find out whether or not they have had the intended effect of reducing the amount of crime within a jurisdiction or the unintended result of increasing the likelihood of becoming a victim of a crime. Our investigation seeks to augment prior analyses of the impact of stand your ground legislation within Texas (Ren et al. forthcoming) and Arizona (Chamlin forthcoming) by examining the influence of castle legislation within Oklahoma. Specifically, we use interrupted time series modeling techniques to determine the influence of Oklahoma’s Self-Defense Act of 2006 on total and disaggregated burglaries.

Authors

• Mitchell B. Chamlin, Texas State University

• Andrea E. Krajewski, Texas State University