Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: Evidence from Underage Drunk Driving Laws

Transcription

1 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: Evidence from Underage Drunk Driving Laws Christopher Carpenter Assistant Professor of Economics/Public Policy UC Irvine Graduate School of Management This paper provides new evidence on the causal relationship between heavy episodic alcohol use and crime by using variation induced by adoption of very strict underage drunk driving laws. Carpenter (2004) shows that these Zero Tolerance (ZT) laws significantly reduced binge drinking (5 or more drinks at one sitting) by males age 18-20, with no effect for slightly older males age I use age-specific arrest data for police agencies in MSAs to estimate the effect of ZT laws on crime, controlling for both year and police-agency fixed effects. I find that ZT laws which lowered the BAC threshold at which underage youth are deemed to be driving under the influence significantly increased the fraction of adult male DUI arrests attributable to year olds. I also find that ZT laws decreased the fraction of nuisance crime and property crime arrests attributable to year olds by about 3-4 percent, with no effects on violent crime. These results are validated by important null findings: ZT laws did not affect arrests in any crime category for slightly older males age In fact, the estimated reductions in property crime by single year of age exhibit a discontinuity around the predicted age threshold. These results suggest that heavy episodic alcohol use does cause the commission of property crime. Though the overall magnitude of the property crime reduction from ZT laws is small, the implied economic savings (i.e. the dollar value of goods damaged or stolen) equals $150 million annually. I thank Alan Auerbach, Ken Chay, Phil Cook, Isaac Ehrlich, Bill Evans, Justin McCrary, Heather Royer, Emmanuel Saez, and seminar participants at UC Berkeley, Washington University School of Social Work, Emory University, RAND, UC Irvine Graduate School of Management, UC San Diego, Simon Fraser University, University of Virginia, UC Riverside, SAMHSA, Mathematica, Yale School of Public Health, University of Michigan School of Public Health, and the annual Robert Wood Johnson research meetings for very helpful comments. Feng Pan and Tracy Finlayson provided helpful research assistance. I am particularly grateful to Officer Rob Schneider of the Ann Arbor Police Department for answering many questions. This project was generously supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, though results do not imply their endorsement. All errors and omissions are my own.

2 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 1 INTRODUCTION There is extensive evidence documenting a strong relationship between alcohol use and crime. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports that over a third of convicted offenders in 1996 were drinking at the time of their offense (1998). Data on victims perceptions indicate that almost 3 million violent crimes occur each year in which victims are certain that the offender had been drinking (BJS, 1998). Finally, some crimes such as driving under the influence (DUI) are explicitly linked to alcohol use. The evidence is less clear, however, that heavy alcohol use causes individuals to commit crime, for example by increasing aggression, lowering inhibition, or altering one s perceptions of acceptable behavior. Indeed, it could be that some unobserved third factor such as risk preference causes individuals both to consume alcohol and to commit crime. Alternatively, individuals who plan to commit crime might drink alcohol in order to get up the nerve. In each of these latter cases one might observe a positive relationship between alcohol use and crime that does not reflect a true causal role for alcohol use. A key difficulty in identifying a compelling research design that would credibly estimate the causal effect of alcohol use on crime is finding a mechanism that generates arguably exogenous variation in alcohol consumption. A handful of previous studies have used state variation in beer and alcohol taxes to estimate crime effects, with most of these papers finding that higher beer taxes are associated with significantly lower rates of several types of crime and self-reports of violent behavior. There are, however, a number of limitations to using state beer taxes in this context, including: disagreement in the economics literature as to the existence and robustness of an inverse relationship between

3 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 2 beer taxes and alcohol consumption (Dee 1999 and others); questions about whether such tax changes meet the requirements for natural experiments (Kubik and Moran 2001); and the lack of a credible within-state control group for identifying beer tax effects. In this paper, I use adoption of tougher drunk driving laws aimed at youth under age 21 to estimate the effect of heavy episodic alcohol use on crime. These Zero Tolerance (ZT) laws were enacted by every state over the past two decades and substantially lowered the legal blood alcohol content (BAC) limit for underage drivers. Specifically, underage youth in the pre-zt regime were subject to the same BAC threshold as adults over age 21 generally in the range After ZT laws were put into effect, this legal limit for youth fell to.00,.01, or.02, depending on the state. ZT laws require states to revoke the license of any underage driver whose BAC exceeds the new lower legal limit. Research indicates these drunk driving laws generated very sharp differences in heavy alcohol use for individuals very close in age. Carpenter (2003, forthcoming) shows that ZT laws reduced the likelihood of binge drinking behavior five or more drinks at one sitting by about 13 percent among young males age 18-20, with no effects for slightly older youth age In the context of identifying effects of alcohol use on crime, ZT laws are particularly attractive because 1) adoption of tougher drunk driving policies is arguably uncorrelated with omitted determinants of crime; 2) there is substantial variation across states in the timing of policy adoption; and 3) the laws create sharp predictions about which age groups should have been affected. To examine whether ZT laws reduced crime committed by underage individuals, I use data on male arrests by single year of age for police agencies in Metropolitan

4 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 3 Statistical Areas (MSAs) from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports for the period (Chilton and Weber 2000). I estimate reduced form models of the effect of ZT laws on the proportion of adult male arrests attributable to (22-24) year olds, controlling for other state alcohol restrictions, state demographics, and macroeconomic conditions. The models also include police agency and year fixed effects; as such, ZT effects are estimated from within-agency deviations in age-specific crime coincident with the timing of ZT adoption. To preview, I find that ZT laws changed the age structure of DUI arrests within police agencies: the proportion of adult male arrests attributable to year old males (but not year old males) rose significantly in conjunction with ZT implementation. Since ZT laws substantially lowered the threshold at which year old impaired drivers were liable for arrest for driving under the influence, this result is not surprising and suggests that ZT laws were actively enforced. Moreover, these DUI arrest increases were most salient in states where virtually the entire population drives (as opposed to using public transportation). I also find that ZT laws and by implication reductions in heavy alcohol use reduced the fraction of public drunkenness and disorderly conduct arrests attributable to year olds (but not year olds), and the same pattern holds for vandalism. With respect to the major types of crime, I find strong evidence that ZT laws were associated with significant decreases in property crimes attributable to young men in the targeted age group, age 18-20, on the order of 3.4 percent. The property crime reductions are validated by an important null finding: ZT laws had no statistically or economically significant effect on property crime arrests for slightly older males age I find no

5 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 4 economically or statistically significant effects for violent crime for either age group. Finally, I show that observable measures of enforcement (per capita police and police expenditure) were not responsive to adoption of ZT laws, suggesting the property and nuisance crime reductions are real. I interpret the results as evidence in favor of a causal role for heavy episodic alcohol use on the commission of nuisance and property crime. This research is important for several reasons. First, I focus on a group of young men who are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system: year old males account for 15 (30) percent of all (adult) male arrests for property crime in MSAs (see Figure 1). Understanding the causal determinants of crime among these youths may therefore be particularly useful in crafting effective crime policy. 1 Second, this paper employs a new policy tool tough drunk driving laws for detecting the effect of heavy alcohol use on crime. Most previous studies have used state excise taxes on beer which have limitations in the context of youth alcohol consumption. Third, this paper examines the relationship between alcohol and crime in the presence of both year and police agency fixed effects which unambiguously purge the ZT estimates from secular year effects and time-invariant unobserved agency-level heterogeneity, respectively. This two-way fixed effects model has become the standard framework in the economics and policy evaluation literature but has generally not been used in research on alcohol and crime. Fourth, these results help isolate the specific types of alcohol use in this case heavy episodic drinking that are causally related to criminal activity in this context. Understanding whether drinking participation or heavy episodic drinking (or both) is the core determinant of 1 I am aware of only two published papers (Joksch and Jones 1993 and Saffer 2001) that specifically examine the relationship between alcohol use and crime among young adults. Markowitz (2001) considers high school students, but focuses on weapon carrying and self-reported violence as opposed to crime.

6 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 5 criminal behavior is key for design of effective public policy. Finally, the results suggest that failure to consider the unintended positive externalities associated with these laws may lead to inefficient under provision of this type of alcohol control. The paper proceeds as follows: Section I briefly reviews the relevant economics literature on alcohol use and crime. Section II describes the data and empirical approach, and Section III presents the results. Section IV offers a discussion, and Section V concludes. I. PREVIOUS LITERATURE: ALCOHOL AND CRIME The economics literature attempting to disentangle the causal relationships between alcohol and crime has used different sets of policy experiments to address the potential endogeneity of alcohol use and criminal behavior. Miron (1999) considers state and federal prohibitions on alcohol use over the past century and finds that alcohol prohibition substantially raised the homicide rate in the United States, consistent with the idea that prohibition created violent black markets. Joksch and Jones (1993) use variation in alcohol availability induced by increases in states Minimum Legal Drinking Age (MLDA) in the 1980s and find that higher MLDAs were associated with a lower incidence of vandalism and disorderly conduct (on the order of 10 percent) among the treated age groups relative to those unaffected by the more restrictive alcohol policy. 2 Most of the papers in the alcohol and crime literature, however, have focused on the money price of alcohol usually the state excise tax on beer as the key variable of Similarly, Grossman and Markowitz (2001) focus on the link between alcohol use and behavioral problems such as fighting among college students. 2 There is substantial evidence that movements toward higher MLDAs were associated with sharp reductions in alcohol use by individuals in the targeted age groups. See, for example, Dee (1999).

7 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 6 interest. Studies using individual-level data have found that beer taxes are negatively related to self-reports of child abuse committed by mothers (Markowitz and Grossman 2000a) and wife abuse committed by husbands (Markowitz and Grossman 2000b). Markowitz (2001) uses alcohol taxes in an instrumental variables framework and finds that drinking and binge behavior both increase the likelihood that a student reports he engaged in physical violence. Finally, Saffer (2001) uses data on individuals age 12 and older from the 1991 cross section of the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse and finds that beer taxes reduce the likelihood of self-reported arrest, property crime, and property damage. Studies using aggregate level FBI data have also used variation in the level of the state beer tax to estimate reduced form models of crime. Cook and Moore (1993) find that higher beer taxes reduce arrests for robbery and rape, with no effect on assault or homicide. 3 II. RESEARCH DESIGN AND DATA DESCRIPTION In this paper I make use of a set of drunk driving laws aimed at underage individuals that have been adopted at different times by all 50 states. These Zero Tolerance (ZT) laws were motivated by the fact that the nationwide MLDA is 21. As such, it may be 3 This class of papers using variation in beer excise taxes (either across states at a point in time or within states over time) has generally not focused on the effects for crime committed by youths and young adults. One notable exception is Saffer (2001), as mentioned above. Because that study only included one cross section, however, it could not address sensitivity of the estimates to inclusion of state fixed effects. Indeed, this issue has become a source of debate in the economics literature, as some economists have called into question the existence of a robust first stage relationship between beer taxes and alcohol consumption among youth. Dee (1999), for example, used Monitoring the Future (MTF) data to show that the strong negative relationship between teen drinking patterns and state beer taxes becomes small and statistically insignificant once controls for unrestricted state and year fixed effects are included. Others have similarly argued that beer taxes are not robust in this context (see, for example, DiNardo and Lemieux 2001, Young and Likens 2000, and Mast, Benson, and Rasmussen 1999). There is, however, a very large literature that finds large and statistically important reductions in heavy drinking associated with beer taxes, some of which do include controls for state fixed effects (see, for example, Cook and Tauschen 1982, Cook and

8 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 7 reasonable to expect that any driver under age 21 should not have measurable amounts of alcohol in his blood. Indeed, these laws require states to suspend the license of any underage driver who has a blood alcohol content (BAC) above.02 or.00, depending on the state. Maine was the first state to enact such a law in 1983, and all states adopted ZT laws by July of The 1995 National Highway Systems Designation Act threatened states with the loss of federal highway funding if they did not adopt a ZT law. Several published studies have shown these laws to have been effective at reducing underage highway fatalities likely to have involved alcohol. 4 Carpenter (2003a) shows that one way these laws worked was to moderate heavy alcohol use among underage males age by about 13 percent, with no effect for slightly older males age This research design exploits two key observations: (1) ZT laws are robust policy levers with respect to heavy episodic drinking among young males; and (2) adoption of these tougher drunk driving laws is arguably unrelated to omitted determinants of agespecific crime. While offenses such as driving under the influence (DUI) and vehicular homicide are clearly policy targets of drunk driving laws, the same is not true of other types of crimes. Indeed, qualitative evidence overwhelmingly indicates that traffic fatality reductions and highway safety were the key reasons states passed ZT laws. Reductions in, say, rape or larceny were not arguments heard in the debates over enacting these policies. 5 Furthermore, as noted above states were compelled to adopt these Moore 1994, Coate and Grossman 1988, Cook and Moore 2001, and others). In this paper, I explicitly focus attention on Zero Tolerance laws. 4 These papers range from descriptive comparisons of states with and without ZT laws to more sophisticated policy analyses that include state and year fixed effects and a variety of state level demographic and economic controls. Estimates in the literature range from 6-17% reductions in highway fatalities attributable to ZT laws. See, for example, Eisenberg (2003). 5 It is, of course, entirely plausible that adoption of ZT laws is correlated with changes in police enforcement and aggressiveness in reducing all types of crime following ZT adoption. It is likely, however, that these biases would affect both crime committed by both year olds and year olds

9 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 8 policies under federal mandate. As such, these drunk driving laws may be plausibly exogenous with respect to crime rates other than DUI. 6 To estimate the effect of ZT laws on crime, I use data on arrests by single year of age for police agencies in Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. 7 These administrative data cover agencies in MSAs and span the time period ( ) over which most ZT laws were adopted by states. 8 The data were compiled and cleaned by two criminologists and include counts of arrests for 43 major types of crime (Chilton and Weber, 2000). 9 I aggregate offenses into different groups standard in the criminology literature, focusing on violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and property crimes (burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft). I also consider the offense most since it is difficult to differentiate a priori between individuals in these age groups. As such, differences in crime associated with ZT adoption by age-based treatment and control groups should reflect true ZT effects. 6 Beer taxes are arguably more susceptible to endogeneity concerns such as those highlighted by Kubik and Moran (2001). If, for example, states earmark funds raised by beer tax increases for funding crime reduction programs, this could contribute to a negative relationship between beer taxes and crime rates. 7 Existing individual level data sources are inadequate for the current purposes. The NLSY does ask about lifetime criminal history in the 1980 survey, but these young men came of age too soon relative to ZT adoption. The National Criminal Victimization Surveys (NCVS) offer repeated cross sections at the individual level on self-reports of criminal victimization, but state identifiers are not available. Another source of individual level data on crime is now being collected by the FBI through an effort called NIBRS, the National Incident Based Reporting System. However, states only began collecting this data in the past half decade, and the first few years contain only a handful of states. The National Household Survey of Drug Abuse (NHSDA) contains information on self-reports of criminal activity for year olds but state identifiers are not available. Similarly, data on juvenile crime (those age 17 or younger) from the FBI is not rich enough to answer the current question. One reason is that the juvenile justice system carries very different procedures, incentives, and sanctions than the adult corrections system (Levitt 1998). Also, data on juvenile crime and custody rates is much less complete than the associated data for adults. 8 The Chilton and Weber crime files do not contain information on arrests by single year of age for agencies outside MSAs, in part because arrests of males in this tight age group in more rural areas are extremely rare for certain types of crime. Police agencies in MSAs are also more likely to report reliable arrest counts throughout the panel. The police agency is the lowest level at which one can obtain arrest data by single year of age. Previous research and reports by the Bureau of Justice Statistics highlight numerous problems related to missing data and imputation associated with the fact that police agencies are not required by law to report arrest counts to the FBI (BJS 1999). A key problem is that the imputation scheme for agencies reporting fewer than 12 months of data changed in 1994, right in the middle of the analysis period. 9 Previous studies have also used the Chilton and Weber arrest files. See, for example, Harris et. al

10 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 9 likely to be affected by the law changes: driving under the influence. Finally, to provide a point of comparison with previous studies, I consider arrests for public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and vandalism. As is common the criminology literature, I use all observations where the police agency reported arrest data for at least a six month period, and I inflate arrest counts by relevant factors for those agencies who reported less than twelve months of data. To capture the age-specific nature of ZT laws, I create a dependent variable that similarly reflects the age structure of crime within a police agency. Specifically, I construct an age-specific arrest ratio, R pt, by dividing the number of arrests of (22-24) year old males by the total number of arrests of adult males in a police agency. This class of dependent variable has been used previously by both economists and criminologists (see, for example, Joksch and Jones 1993 and Conlin, Dickert-Conlin, and Pepper 2002). 10 The benchmark model for estimating the reduced form effect of ZT laws is given by: (1) R pt = β 0 + β 1 Z st + β 2 (Zero Tolerance) st + β 3 P + β 4 T + ε st where R pt is the age-specific arrest ratio for agency p in year t, as described above. I estimate separate regressions for males in each age group for DUI, public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, vandalism, property crime, and violent crime. Z is a vector of state variables that may be correlated with the key variables of interest or that have been shown in previous work to be empirically important determinants of crime. These 10 This arrest ratio also has the advantage that it avoids the problem of questionable reliability of population counts by single year of age at either the state or MSA level. It also has drawbacks, however. For example, by including year olds in the denominator, one would expect an upward bias for the estimated effect of ZT laws on the year old arrest ratio (if ZT laws truly reduce crime committed by year olds). Table 10 shows that the key results are robust to using arrests of all adults 25 years old and older as an alternative denominator.

11 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 10 include: the real value of the federal and state excise tax on beer (in 2001 dollars), fraction of population age 15-19, fraction black, share of population below the federal poverty level, per capita income (in 2001 dollars), a variable indicating the Minimum Legal Drinking Age is 21, and the presence of each of three drunk driving policies aimed at adults. 11 Zero Tolerance is a variable that equals the fraction of the year for which the state ZT policy is in place, and the coefficient of interest, β 2, captures the effects of the ZT policies on crime. Dummy variables for each police agency control for time-invariant agency-specific factors and are captured by P. Dummy variables for each survey year control for period-specific shocks common to all police agencies in any given year and are captured by T. All regressions are weighted by the population reported by the police agency, and standard errors are clustered at the state level. The intuition in this paper is straightforward: a causal role for alcohol use in crime should be characterized by a reduction in arrests when ZT laws are adopted. Moreover, these reductions should be age-specific, since the changes in alcohol use associated with ZT laws were themselves age-specific. Therefore, if alcohol use causes crime, then one should observe reductions in the year old arrest ratio, but not the year old arrest ratio. Put differently, the year old males provide an important counterfactual for what would have happened to the criminal activity of year olds in the absence 11 Information on drunk driving and drinking age policies comes from various years of the Digest of State Alcohol Related Legislation, as well as from personal correspondence with the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration (NHTSA). The number of states that adopted ZT laws is in Appendix Table 1. Data on beer taxes come from various years of the Brewer s Almanac. State unemployment rates come from BLS published statistics. I use the Statistical Abstract of the United States, various years, to obtain per capita income (transformed to 2001 dollars), percent of the state population below the federal poverty level, the share of the population that is black, and the share of the population age Means for key variables used in the analysis are reported in Table 2. The adult drunk driving policies are discussed at length elsewhere (see, for example, Dee 2001) and include lower legal limits for adults (at.08 blood alcohol content and.10 blood alcohol content) and administrative license revocation

12 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 11 of ZT policies (and, by implication, heavy alcohol use). As such, arrests of year olds account for contemporaneous changes in criminality that may be spuriously associated with ZT laws but that are not due to the reductions in heavy alcohol use. III. MAIN RESULTS Descriptive statistics on the age-specific arrest ratios in the pre-zt period for the various types of crime considered in this paper are provided in Table 2. I note that the fraction of crime attributable to year olds is larger than that attributable to year olds for every type of crime considered, except for DUI. Moreover, the level of the year old arrest ratio indicates that young men in this tight age range are responsible for a disproportionately large share of arrests for different types of crime, particularly property crime. These results that the age-crime profile peaks at about age 18 have been noted previously by other researchers (e.g. Donohue and Levitt 2002). I begin by presenting evidence of the effect of ZT laws on the age composition of DUI arrests. Figure 2 depicts the graphical relationships between theoretical BAC levels and DUI arrests before and after ZT laws, showing both the old level applicable to adults and youth in the pre-zt regime, as well as the new lower level applicable to youth once ZT laws are passed. Given some BAC level at which individuals exhibit driving impairment (and are thus pulled over by police), Figure 2 illustrates why DUI arrests of underage youth should increase with ZT laws. Underage drivers in the pre-zt regime who were impaired (and thus pulled over by the police) but below the state s legal limit for adults (Group 2) were generally not subject to a DUI arrest; in the post-zt regime, laws. Carpenter (2003a) showed these laws not to be important predictors of youth alcohol consumption. They are also not systematically related to youth arrests. I include them here for completeness only.

13 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 12 these same drivers (Group 5) would be in violation of DUI law. 12 Therefore, if there were no change in drinking patterns associated with policy adoption, ZT laws should by construction increase the year old arrest ratio for driving under the influence (DUI). Moreover, as long as the behavioral consumption response was not complete (i.e. as long as it is not true that all underage drivers in Groups 1 and 2 moved to groups 6 and 7 in the post-zt regime), one should still expect an increase in DUI arrests for year olds. Put differently, an increase in DUI arrests for year old males associated with ZT adoption indicates that the laws were being actively enforced (i.e. they were not simply on the books ). Indeed, Table 2 indicates an important finding that ZT laws had a positive, significant, and direct effect on arrests of year olds for driving under the influence (DUI), even after controlling for all the variables described above, including police agency and year fixed effects. This suggests that another way ZT laws reduced fatalities was by removing dangerous underage drivers from the nation s highways. 13 Relative to its pre-reform mean, the top panel of Table 2 suggests that ZT laws reduced the DUI arrest ratio over the decade by about 5 percent. I find no significant effect of ZT laws on the year old arrest ratio for DUI. For completeness and comparison to the previous literature, I also report the effect of the (log of the) real value of the state and federal beer tax in 2001 dollars. I find no beer tax effects on either DUI arrest ratio. 12 Note that it is likely that underage drivers who had driven above the state s legal limit for adults in the pre-zt regime (Group 1) would be unlikely to significantly reduce alcohol consumption after ZT laws are passed (i.e. move to Groups 6 or 7) since their behavior in the pre-zt regime reveals non-responsiveness to DUI law. 13 Note that this result need not imply increased enforcement or police activity. Indeed, it is unlikely that police officers can visually differentiate between 20 and 22 year olds when they decide to pull over an impaired driver. Later I show that ZT laws appear unrelated to observable measures of police enforcement.

14 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 13 Table 3 explores these DUI effects further by exploiting variation across MSAs in the extent of public transportation. The intuition is that policies imposing harsher sanctions on drunk driving should be relatively unimportant in areas with extensive public transportation systems (e.g. New York City and Washington DC) compared to similarly sized cities where essentially everyone drives (e.g. Detroit). While the degree of mass transit is almost surely not randomly assigned in the population, it provides a useful descriptive margin for identifying patterns that one should observe in the presence of a true ZT effect. To implement this strategy, I separate MSAs by the fraction of the working age population that reported using public transportation as a means to get to work in the 2000 Census. 14 I then performed OLS estimation of equation (1) separately on each of three groups: areas with relatively low (<2%), medium (2-6%), and high (>6%) rates of public transit use. 15 Indeed, the top row of Table 3 reports the fraction of adult male arrests of year olds for DUI, property crime, and violent crime that are for DUI and reflects the expected pattern: DUI arrests as a fraction of the total are decreasing in public transit use, as expected. Table 3 reveals that the DUI arrest increases associated with ZT laws of year olds also follow the predicted pattern: areas with the lowest rates of public transit exhibited the largest and strongest responsiveness of year old DUI arrests to ZT laws. Specifically, the DUI arrest rate for these high-driving areas increased by about ten percent relative to its pre-reform mean: this is about twice the size of the effect in the full 14 A small fraction of police agencies in the Chilton and Weber crime files could not be matched to public transit measures. These observations were dropped from the analysis in Table The overall pattern of DUI arrests is robust to reasonable alternative choices of these thresholds.

15 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 14 sample (Table 2). 16 In contrast, areas with more developed mass transit had smaller and statistically insignificant ZT induced increases. 17 While crimes such as DUI are explicitly linked to alcohol use, there are other sets of crimes that are commonly thought to be associated with alcohol use in less direct ways. Often termed nuisance crimes, these offenses are generally characterized by large social costs relative to direct economic costs. I use anecdotal evidence that when arresting individuals for the negative effects of heavy alcohol consumption, police officers typically choose either public drunkenness or disorderly conduct. Considering arrests for these two crime categories, I find in the top panel of Table 4 that ZT laws reduced year old arrest ratio for these two crimes on the order of 5 percent relative to its pre-reform mean. Notably, the year old arrest ratio for these crimes was unaffected by ZT laws, and neither ratio is significantly responsive to state beer taxes. This is consistent with the idea that ZT laws moderated heavy alcohol use by year old males but not year old males. The bottom panel of Table 4 considers the reduced form effect of ZT laws on the nuisance crime of vandalism. I consider vandalism separately because previous research suggests that increases in the MLDA induced large reductions in vandalism arrests (Joksch and Jones 1993). The results in Table 4 are consistent with the effects found by previous studies and suggest that ZT laws reduced the year old arrest ratio for 16 Estimates for year olds in this DUI exercise by the degree of public transit revealed no statistically significant ZT effects. 17 This overall pattern remains if one considers an alternative dependent variable capturing the fraction of year old male arrests for DUI, property and violent crime that are attributable to DUI. That is, low public transit areas saw relatively more important increases in this alternative arrest ratio than did high public transit areas.

16 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 15 vandalism by about 4.5 percent relative to the pre-reform mean. 18 Again, there are no ZT effects for year olds, and there are no beer tax effects for either model. Table 5 presents the key crime results of interest and focuses on the two major classifications considered by economists and criminologists: violent and property crimes. The top panel of Table 5 provides no evidence that ZT laws and by implication reductions in heavy alcohol use reduced violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) committed by young men in the targeted age group. The coefficient estimate, while negative, is not statistically significant and very small in magnitude (suggesting an effect of.2% relative to the pre-reform mean of the year old violent crime arrest ratio). In fact, the 95% confidence interval for the ZT coefficient is such that it excludes reductions larger than about 5.2 percent of the associated pre-reform mean. The lower panel of Table 5, in contrast, provides evidence that ZT laws were effective at reducing the fraction of adult male property crime arrests attributable to year olds, the targeted group. Specifically, I estimate that ZT laws significantly reduced the year old property crime arrest ratio by 3.4 percent relative to its prereform mean, controlling for police agency and year fixed effects, other alcohol control policies, and state demographic controls. Both the property and violent crime models are validated by an important null finding for year old males, whose alcohol consumption behavior was unaffected by the tougher ZT laws: the ZT effects for this slightly older age group are small and statistically indistinguishable from zero. 18 Appendix Table 2 provides replication of the qualitative results in Joksch and Jones (1993) that changes in the MLDA over the period reduced vandalism and disorderly conduct arrests of year olds. While their empirical approach and data differ slightly from those considered here, I am able to reproduce their main result that nationwide increases in the MLDA (to age 21) were associated with significant reductions in both vandalism and disorderly conduct. Specifically, the estimates in Appendix Table 2 indicate that, relative to the pre-reform mean of the year old arrest ratio, an MLDA of 21

17 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 16 There are a handful of other estimates in Table 5 that merit mention. First, the reduced form models explain a large fraction of the variation in age-specific arrest ratios for property crime on the order of 56 percent. Not surprisingly, police agency fixed effects by removing time-invariant agency-specific heterogeneity account for the bulk of this explanatory variation (results not shown). Second, the effects of the (log) beer tax on the age-specific arrest ratios for violent and property crime in Tables 4 and 5 are not systematically negative and are never statistically significant. This highlights an important advancement of the current research design relative to those that rely on variation in beer taxes: ZT laws create natural within-state treatment and control groups based on single year of age. The same is not true of beer taxes, since everyone essentially pays the same money price for beer. As such, it is not surprising that there appears to be no systematic relationship between beer taxes and the age-specific arrest ratios considered here. The estimates in Table 5 suggest an important role for ZT laws and by implication reductions in heavy alcohol use in the reduction of property crime. Table 6 investigates these property crime reductions further by separating the dependent variable into finer ratios by single year of age. Each column represents a different OLS estimation, and all models include all the control variables in equation (1). The results in Table 6 show that the property crime reductions associated with ZT laws conform predictably to the specific ages treated by ZT laws. Specifically, the estimated effects of ZT laws in Table 6 exhibit a predictable discontinuity in age just after age 20, as shown reduced vandalism arrests by 3.2 percent and disorderly conduct arrests by 3.4 percent, both significant at the 10 percent level.

18 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 17 in Figure Table 6, then, suggests that the property crime effects associated with ZT laws reflect age-specific reductions that would be expected in the presence of a causal link between heavy alcohol use and property crime. Table 7 investigates the property crime effects by specific offense type for the year old arrest ratio. Recall that property crimes include arrests for burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. As with the previous tables, all models include all the control variables described above, including unrestricted two-way fixed effects. The estimates in Table 7 indicate that ZT laws had the largest and strongest effects on reductions in larceny, or theft. The reduced form estimate indicates that ZT laws reduced the year old arrest ratio for larceny by about 4.7 percent relative to the pre-reform mean. Estimates for burglary and motor vehicle theft, while both negative, are not significant. Table 8 examines the role of city size in the property crime reductions. The Chilton and Weber crime files allow one to separately identify police agencies in cities and counties of various population sizes. While there is no strong a priori theoretical prediction on the importance of ZT laws by city size, it does offer an interesting descriptive margin. Each column of Table 8 represents a separate OLS estimation of equation (1) for four various city sizes: more than 100,000 residents, between 25,000 and 100,000 residents, between 10,000 and 25,000 residents, and less than 10,000 residents. Interestingly, the property crime reductions appear approximately evenly distributed across medium and small sized cities. Estimates of the ZT effect for the three city sizes below 100,000 residents are all statistically significant and very similar in magnitude to 19 Results for 21 year olds are not reported in Table 6 but are plotted in Figure 3. I exclude 21 year olds throughout the analysis for comparability to the binge drinking estimates in Carpenter (2003). Those consumption models excluded 21 year old men due to an inability to precisely assign treatment status based on lack of birthdate information.

19 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 18 the baseline estimates (about a 4-5 percent reduction off the pre-reform mean). 20 Property crimes attributable to year olds for police agencies in the very large cities exhibit smaller responsiveness to ZT laws, and the coefficient estimate is not statistically significant. 21 Table 9 investigates whether ZT laws affected criminal activity for college and university police agencies. An interesting feature of FBI crime data is that areas with no permanent residents (such as university police) can be separately identified because they report zero population. This allows the researcher to consider the subsample of fullservice college and university police departments, who generally have the same authority as other police agencies to make arrests for different types of crime. Because the disproportionate majority of college students are in the age groups targeted by ZT laws, one might expect particularly strong effects for this subgroup. Moreover, a high rate of problem alcohol use in universities has been well documented and is widely portrayed in the popular media as a causal factor in rape on college campuses. However, college and university students may be less likely to have or need car access than their similarly-aged peers who are not in college; as such, it is unclear whether drunk driving laws should 20 Estimates for year olds by city size revealed no statistically significant ZT effects. It is also worth nothing that separating the analysis by city size allows an examination of the degree to which the zeros problem might be contributing to the results. This is because cities of at least 10,000 residents have almost no police agencies characterized by zero arrests of year olds for property crime. As such, the arrest ratio does a better job in those agencies at capturing the true age structure of crime. That the property crime reductions associated with ZT laws in cities of, say, 25,000 to 99,999 residents (where essentially all police agencies have strictly positive arrests of year olds for property crime) are very similar to the full sample estimates suggests that the ZT effects are, indeed, real. 21 One possible explanation for the smaller property crime reductions in the very large cities is that city size may be correlated with the presence of mass transit which itself should affect the degree to which ZT laws reduce alcohol consumption. I investigated this directly by performing the same public transit exercise for property crime arrests as was done in Table 3 for DUI arrests. I found property crime reductions associated with ZT laws for the lowest public transportation areas that were marginally significant at the 10 percent level and that were similar in size to the full sample estimates about 3.5 percent. Somewhat surprisingly, the areas with the highest rates of public transit also experienced marginally significant reductions in property crime attributable to year old males.

20 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 19 have affected their drinking behaviors. Also, university crime as measured by arrests reported by university police departments is much rarer than crime away from universities. Prior to ZT adoption, for example, university police arrested only 7 males age per year on average for property crime compared with 31 male arrests of year olds in the balance of the sample. The same pattern exists for violent crime as well: university police arrested less than 2 men age on average per year for violent crime, while the same figure for other agencies was 13.6 arrests. Thus, it is not clear whether one should expect ZT laws to have affected age-specific crime at colleges and universities. Table 9 reports the associated ZT effects for year old arrest ratios for DUI, property crime, and violent crime for the sample of colleges and universities. 22 Notably, the pattern of the observed coefficient estimates on the ZT indicator is very similar to the main sample estimates: ZT laws are estimated to reduce property crime for these agencies by a marginally significant 10 percent. The estimate for the DUI arrest ratio, while not statistically significant, indicates a large increase of about 14 percent, while the violent crime effect in Column 3 is essentially zero. 23 Table 10 presents a variety of robustness checks on the baseline property crime results for year olds for the main sample. Each column of Table 10 represents a different model, and all include the control variables described above in equation (1). 22 Note that because these agencies report zero population, the models are unweighted. In models where I weight the arrest ratios by age-specific arrest counts, the overall qualitative pattern remains, though the property crime reduction is no longer statistically significant. 23 Note that this does not rule out a causal role for alcohol use in campus violent crime such as rape. In particular, one alternative explanation (of several) that cannot be tested with arrest data is that heavy episodic use increases the likelihood of rape victimization but not the commission of rape (i.e. drunk people are easier targets). I am investigating this possibility in future research. Also, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the overwhelming majority (85% in 1995) of violent victimizations of college

21 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 20 Column 2 presents results from an OLS estimation of equation (1) above where the dependent variable is the log transformation of the arrest ratio. This measure has been used previously (see, for example, Joksch and Jones 1993) but has the obvious disadvantage that zero values of the arrest ratio must be dropped. The results in Column 2 indicate that the property crime reductions associated with ZT laws are robust to this transformation: ZT laws are estimated to reduce the arrest ratio by about 4 percent, significant at the 10 percent level. Column 3 considers another interesting transformation of the main dependent variable: using only arrests of males age 25 and older as the denominator in the age-specific arrest ratio. This addresses concerns that reductions in arrests of and year olds affect both the numerator and the denominator in the main arrest ratios. Column 3 shows that the ZT effects are robust to this transformation: the coefficient estimate indicates a reduction of about 4.5 percent relative to the prereform mean, very similar to the baseline estimates. Column 4 shows that the property crime reductions are also robust to a related manipulation of the dependent variable: ZT laws significantly reduced the fraction of total male arrests in a police agency including juveniles attributable to year olds on the order of 2 percent relative to the prereform mean. Column 5 of Table 10 reports results from models that are identical to the baseline but that include data over the longer time period Recall that because most of the variation in ZT laws occurs in the early 1990s, I focus attention on the period The results in Column 5 indicate that the property crime reductions are not an artifact of the choice of time period: over the longer time period, ZT laws are estimated to students take place off campus (1998). Because the jurisdiction of university police is typically limited to official campus environs, this may be a weak test of alcohol s causal role in crime on college campuses.

22 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 21 significantly reduce the year old property crime arrest ratio by about 4.6 percent relative to the pre-reform mean. Finally, Column 6 of Table 10 restricts attention to those police agencies reporting a full year (12 months) of data to see whether the inflation of arrest counts for agencies reporting six to eleven months of data may be driving the results. The results in Column 6 confirm the main findings: even restricting attention to the full-year reporting agencies yields a significant reduction in the property crime arrest ratio on the order of 3 percent associated with ZT adoption. 24 Finally, Table 11 addresses the concern that adoption of tougher drunk driving laws might be systematically related to increased enforcement efforts. 25 If, for example, police officers work harder at reducing crime when laws get tougher, then one might observe reductions in crime due to the increased police effort and not the policy itself. Notably, the research design in this paper greatly reduces the likelihood of spurious enforcement effects by considering parallel crime models of slightly older males. This is particularly true for models of the DUI arrest ratios arguably the most direct outcome. Given that it is unlikely police can visually differentiate between a 20 year old and a 22 year old driver, the age comparisons of the arrest ratio should provide clean estimates 24 I also attempted to estimate maximum likelihood negative binomial models of the count of arrests of year old males. Results were generally similar to the baseline estimates, though the models did not support population weights, clustering, and the inclusion of several thousand police agency fixed effects. As noted above, the OLS estimates were chosen as the main approach for consistency with the previous literature and for computational considerations. 25 Enforcement may be a more general concern given the increase in police officers in associated with the Community Oriented Policing Strategies (COPS) program a key component of the 1995 federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. This program provided grants to police agencies to increase the size of their police forces. There is no reason to believe these increases to be correlated with adoption of Zero Tolerance laws, however. Moreover, given the timing of ZT laws (early 1990s), it is unlikely that my estimates are greatly affected by the late 1990s COPS grants. As a specification check, I re-estimated models that restricted attention to the pre-1995 period (the year of the first COPS grant) and found essentially identical results: the property crime estimate for year olds was.011 and statistically significant at the 5 percent level, while the associated estimate for year olds was.001.

23 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 22 net of aggressiveness (i.e. increased enforcement should have increased both the DUI arrests of and year olds). I examine the enforcement hypothesis directly in Table 11 by considering annual state-level reports of police expenditure and sworn police officers per capita as reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts. If the ZT effects are spurious because of increased enforcement, these measures should exhibit upward changes coincident with ZT adoption. To test this hypothesis, I estimated a variant of equation (1) above, replacing police agency fixed effects with state fixed effects and weighting by state population estimates. I consider the natural log of each per capita enforcement measure, controlling for all the price and demographic variables as previous. I report coefficient estimates for the Zero Tolerance indicator for police expenditure in Column 1 and sworn police officers in Column 2. Notably, Table 11 offers no evidence that adoption of ZT laws was associated with changes in law enforcement that might have contributed to the property and nuisance crime reductions. Both coefficient estimates indicate very small percentage changes in enforcement neither of which is statistically significant. Moreover, the ZT effect on police expenditure goes against the hypothesis (i.e. it is negative). This suggests that the Zero Tolerance induced crime reductions were real. 26 IV. DISCUSSION 26 Of course, one could imagine reallocations of enforcement within states toward younger individuals once ZT laws were passed. In that case, one would not observe changes in state level measures of enforcement. This is unlikely, however, as the arrest models for year olds exhibited no responsiveness to ZT laws. Substitution by police across crime types (as opposed to ages) is similarly unlikely since I find no reductions for any violent crime type, nor for year olds for property or nuisance crime.

24 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 23 The estimates in Tables 3 and 4 suggest an important role for drunk driving policy in the reduction of nuisance and property crime. Specifically, I estimate that adoption of ZT laws reduced the fraction of property crime arrests attributable to year olds on the order of 3.4 percent. Recall that in the pre-zt regime, year old males represented about 30 percent of all adult male arrests for property crimes (for police agencies in MSAs); this implies that ZT laws reduced overall male property crime in MSAs by about 1 percent. How big are the economic and social savings associated with the ZT-induced crime reductions? While the reduction in overall property crime may seem small, the nation s direct cost of property crime (based on goods stolen) in 1995 was approximately 15.1 billion dollars (FBI 1995). A simple back of the envelope calculation would imply that ZT laws reduced the money costs from property crime by over 150 million dollars annually. 27 Taken together with the estimates from Table 11 that ZT laws were not associated with economically or statistically important changes in police expenditures the main form of direct money costs from ZT laws these estimates imply that ZT laws may be particularly attractive from a cost/benefit standpoint. 28 Put differently, the very large direct savings from ZT laws as well as the unmeasured social savings from 27 Of course, this assumes the ZT-induced property crime effects were similarly sized in police agencies outside MSAs. Measured in number of arrests, the estimates suggest that ZT laws reduced reported property crime arrests in MSAs by about 3,000. To see this, note that in 1995 there were approximately 165,000 arrests of year old males for property crime. Approximately 84 percent of the United States population resides in MSAs, and ZT laws reduce total property crime arrests by about 2.2 percent in this age group. 165,000 *.84 *.022 = Estimates from Carpenter (2003a) imply that ZT laws reduced binge drinking behavior for about 223,000 males age per year in MSAs (33 percent of the 5.2 million males in MSAs age binge drink, and ZT laws reduce this by 13 percent). This implies that, of young males whose alcohol consumption behavior was moderated by ZT laws, about one in every 73 would have been arrested for property crime in the absence of ZT laws. 28 Other potential direct costs include administrative burdens on court systems associated with more DUI offenders. Other potential benefits include the wages and work productivity that would have been lost had these youths been arrested (Nagin and Waldfogel 1998).

25 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 24 reductions in costless crimes like disorderly conduct suggest that harsher drunk driving policies may be inefficiently underprovided relative to the social optimum. 29 These results are qualitatively consistent with the only individual level alcohol study to explicitly focus on young adults. 30 Saffer (2001) used one cross section of the National Household Survey of Drug Abuse to show that beer taxes were negatively related to self-reports of arrests for property crime such as theft among year olds. The results are also consistent with a previous paper using variation in the Minimum Legal Drinking Age to estimate the effect of alcohol availability on age-specific crime (Joksch and Jones 1993). That paper found that changes in the MLDA resulted in significant reductions in less severe types of crime (such as vandalism), with smaller and insignificant effects on violent crimes. 31 Finally, the results are consistent with stylized patterns documented by the Bureau of Justice Statistics: data from surveys of individuals on probation, in local jails, or in state prison consistently show that the estimated average blood alcohol content levels of convicted offenders at the time of their offense are higher for property crimes than for either violent or nuisance crimes. Among probationers, for example, the estimated BAC of individuals convicted of property crimes was.24 versus.18 for those convicted of violent crimes (BJS 1998). This is consistent with the possibility that the intensity of alcohol use not simply participation may be the more important determinant in causing crime. 29 Note that a full cost benefit analysis of drunk driving laws would first consider the effects on lives saved. Although not the focus of this paper, such analyses have been performed elsewhere (see Kenkel 1998). 30 The results are also consistent with a study of marijuana s causal effect on crime. Pacula and Kilmer (2003) find strong evidence that marijuana causes property crime but mixed evidence for violent crime. 31 Wechsler et. al. (2002) also find negative secondhand effects of alcohol use among college students on nuisance crimes such as vandalism as reported by neighboring residents.

26 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 25 It is, of course, possible that heavy alcohol use does not cause the commission of violent crime. 32 One possibility is that violent crimes such as murder require extensive planning and are therefore less sensitive to the impulsivity and aggression induced by episodic alcohol use. These results, however, do not necessarily rule out a causal connection between heavy alcohol use and violent crime. Suppose, for example, that violent criminals are simply less likely to abide by any laws including drunk driving laws. As such, their consumption behavior may have been less sensitive to ZT adoption. In this case, ZT laws do not provide adequate tests of the role of alcohol in crime. More generally, it might be that alcohol-induced violent crimes are more likely to take place outside of driving-related contexts (e.g. intra-household family violence). 33 Finally, violent crimes caused by alcohol might be less likely to be reported to police agencies (e.g. some university judicial boards may handle claims of alcohol-related violence). 34 This analysis focuses on arrests by young males. While consistent with much of the existing literature on alcohol and crime, the main reasons for excluding a detailed analysis of female arrests are twofold. First, the evidence that ZT laws reduced heavy alcohol use among females is weaker than the associated evidence for males. For example, Carpenter (2003a) showed that the ZT effects on binge drinking for year old females were not robust to the inclusion of year old females who should have been unaffected by adoption of tougher drunk driving policy. The second reason for focusing on males is that they are much more likely to be in the criminal justice system than are females. For example, the median number of arrests for year old males in 32 Note that these results say very little about criminal victimization. Indeed, it could be that heavy alcohol use increases the likelihood of criminal victimization particularly violent victimization such as rape. These effects would not be detectable using age-specific arrest data. 33 NCVS data indicate that over two thirds of victims of rape and sexual assault know their attacker.

27 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 26 the police agency data is six times that for year old females, and fully 42.6 percent of the police-agency level observations for property crime contain zero arrests of year old females (the relevant figure for males is only 15.5 percent). Ignoring this, however, an estimation of equation (1) for females indicated that ZT laws reduced the fraction of adult female arrests for property crimes attributable to year olds by 5.3 percent (statistically significant at the five percent level) relative to its pre-reform mean of 18.7 percent. 35 Finally, these results should be placed against the larger backdrop of the unprecedented reductions in crime in the 1990s that has been well-documented by several previous researchers (Donohue and Levitt 2001, and others). How much did the nationwide adoption of Zero Tolerance laws contribute to these reductions? The likely answer is very little. While the results presented here show a robust and important relationship between Zero Tolerance laws, heavy alcohol use (by implication), and the commission of property crime by young males age 18-20, the overall magnitude of the implied reduction about 1 percent of property crime is small relative to the 1990s decline. Moreover, the most dramatic crime reductions in the 1990s were for violent crime, and these results indicate no association between adoption of ZT laws and agespecific arrests for violent crime. 34 NCVS data indicate that only one third of rape and sexual assault incidents are reported to the police. 35 It should also be noted that this analysis cannot address the potentially interesting role of race in the relationship between heavy alcohol use and crime due to data limitations. This is because this research design hinges crucially on comparisons by single year of age, and the crime files do not permit disaggregation by both age and race. Given the well documented racial disparities in arrest probability and incarceration rates (black males are over-represented in the criminal justice system relative to the population), as well as differences in alcohol use by race (black males are less likely to binge drink compared to their white counterparts), the role of race in the alcohol and crime relationship remains an interesting question for future research.

28 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime p. 27 V. CONCLUSION This paper provides new evidence on the causal relationship between heavy alcohol use and crime. I use variation induced by adoption of laws that make it illegal for underage drivers to have any noticeable amount of alcohol in their blood. Previous research shows that these laws significantly reduced heavy episodic alcohol use among young men age 18-20, with no effect for slightly older males age (Carpenter 2003a). I use agespecific arrest data for MSAs at the police-agency level to estimate two-way fixed effects models of ZT laws and crime. I find that ZT laws altered the age structure of arrests for driving under the influence. DUI arrests of year old males increased relative to those for older males on the order of 4 percent. Results also indicate that ZT laws reduced arrests of young men in the targeted age group for alcohol-related offenses such as public drunkenness and disorderly conduct, as well as the nuisance crime of vandalism. With respect to the major types of crime, I find that adoption of these tougher drunk driving laws and by implication reductions in heavy alcohol use reduced the fraction of adult male property crime arrests in MSAs attributable to year olds by about 3.4 percent, or an overall reduction of about one percent. These reductions are validated by important null findings for property crime for slightly older males age 22-24, and I find no effects on violent crime for either age group. The overall pattern of the evidence suggests a causal role for heavy episodic alcohol use in the commission of nuisance and property crime by young men. The results also highlight what appears to be a relatively cost effective way to reduce the commission of crime caused by heavy episodic alcohol use.

29 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 28 References Becker, Gary (1968). Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach, Journal of Political Economy, 76:2 March/April 1968, Beer Institute. Brewer s Almanac. New York, NY: United States Brewers Foundation, various years. Bertrand, Marianne, Esther Duflo, and Sendhil Mullainathan (2003). How Much Should We Trust Difference-In Differences Estimates?, Quarterly Journal of Economics, forthcoming. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice (1998). Alcohol and Crime: An Analysis of National Data on the Prevalence of Alcohol Involvement in Crime. NCJ , April. Carpenter, Christopher (2003a). How Do Zero Tolerance Drunk Driving Laws Work?, forthcoming, Journal of Health Economics (2003b). Heavy Alcohol Use and Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Evidence from Underage Drunk Driving Laws, mimeo (2003c). Heavy Alcohol Use and Youth Suicide: Evidence from Underage Drunk Driving Laws, mimeo. Coate, Douglas and Michael Grossman (1988). Effects of Alcoholic Beverage Prices and Legal Drinking Ages on Youth Alcohol Use, Journal of Law and Economics, 31(1): Conlin, Michael, Stacy Dickert-Conlin, and John Pepper (2002). The Effect of Alcohol Prohibition on Illicit Drug Related Crimes, unpublished working paper. Cook, Philip and Michael Moore (1993). Economic Perspectives on Reducing Alcohol- Related Violence. In Alcohol and Interpersonal Violence: Fostering Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Susan E. Martin. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Research Monograph 24. NIH Publication No , Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993, (1994). This Tax s for You, National Tax Journal, 47(3): (2002). Environment and Persistence in Youthful Drinking Patterns, in Risky Behavior among Youths, Jonathan Gruber ed., University of Chicago Press. Cook, Philip and George Tauchen (1982). The Effect of Liquor Taxes on Heavy Drinking, The Bell Journal of Economics, (13)2:

30 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 29 Cordilia, A. (1985). Alcohol and Property Crime: Explaining the Causal Nexus, Journal of Studies on Alcohol, (46):2, March, Dee, Thomas (1999). State Alcohol Policies, Teen Drinking and Traffic Fatalities, Journal of Public Economics, 72: (2001). Does Setting Limits Save Lives? The Case of 0.08 BAC Laws, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 20(1): (2001). Minimum Legal Drinking Ages and Teen Childbearing, Journal of Human Resources,. DiNardo, John and Thomas Lemieux (2001). Alcohol, Marijuana, and American Youth: the Unintended Consequences of Government Regulation, Journal of Health Economics, 20 (2001): Donohue, John and Steven Levitt (2001). The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(2): Ehrlich, Isaac (1973). Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation, Journal of Political Economy, 81(3): Eisenberg, Daniel (2003). Evaluating the Effectiveness of Policies Related to Drunk Driving, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 22(2): FBI Uniform Crime Reporting ( ). Crime in the United States, online at Fagan, Jeffrey (1990). Intoxication and Aggression in Drugs and Crime: Crime and Justice, A Review of Research, Vol. 13, edited by Michael Tonry and James Q. Wilson. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press (1993). Interactions Among Drugs, Alcohol and Violence, Health Affairs, (12) Ferguson, S. A., M. Fields, and R.B. Voas (2003). Enforcement of Zero Tolerance Laws in the United States, unpublished manuscript. Ferguson, S. A. and A. F. Williams (2002). Awareness of zero tolerance laws in three states, Journal of Safety Research, (33): Forrest, G. G. and R. H. Gordon (1990). Substance Abuse, Homicide, and Violent Behavior. New York: Garden Press.

31 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 30 Grossman, Michael, and Sara Markowitz (2001). Alcohol Regulation and Violence on College Campuses, in Economics of Substance Abuse, edited by Michael Grossman and Chee-Ruey Hsieh, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Limited. Gruber, Jonathan (1994). The Incidence of Mandated Maternity Benefits, American Economic Review, 84(3): Harris, Anthony, Thomas, Steven, Fisher, Gene, & Hirsch, David (2002). Murder and medicine: The Lethality of Criminal Assault , Homicide Studies, 6, Hingson, R. (1996). Prevention of Drinking and Driving, Alcohol Health and Research World, 20(4): Jacob, Brian and Lars Lefgren (2003). Are Idle Hands the Devil s Workshop? Incapacitation, Concentration and Juvenile Crime, NBER Working Paper #9653. Joksch, Hans C. and Ralph K. Jones (1993). Changes in the Drinking Age and Crime, Journal of Criminal Justice, 21: Joyce, Theodore (2003). Did Legalized Abortion Lower Crime?, forthcoming Journal of Human Resources. Kenkel, Donald (1998). A Guide to Cost-Benefit Analysis of Drunk Driving Policies, Journal of Drug Issues. Levitt, Steven (1998). Juvenile Crime and Punishment, Journal of Political Economy, 106 (December): Lochner, Lance and Enrico Moretti (2002). The Effect of Education on Crime: Evidence from Prison Inmates, Arrests, and Self-Reports, NBER Working Paper. Lowry, Richard, Deborah Holtzman, Benedict Truman, Laura Kann, Janet Collins, and Lloyd Kolbe (1994). Substance Use and HIV Related Sexual Behaviors among US High School Students: Are They Related?, American Journal of Public Health, 84(7): Maltz, Michael (1999). Bridging Gaps in Police Crime Data, discussion paper for the BJS Fellows Program, available at: Markowitz, Sara (2000). An Economic Analysis of Alcohol, Drugs, and Violent Crime in the National Crime Victimization Survey, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 7982.

32 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p (2000). The Price of Alcohol, Wife Abuse, and Husband Abuse, Southern Economic Journal, 67(2): (2001). Criminal Violence and Alcoholic Beverage Control: Evidence from an International Study, in Economics of Substance Abuse, edited by Michael Grossman and Chee-Ruey Hsieh, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Limited (2001). The Role of Alcohol and Drug Consumption in Determining Physical Violence and Weapon Carrying by Teenagers, Eastern Economic Journal, 27(4): Markowitz, Sara and Michael Grossman (1998). Alcohol Regulation and Domestic Violence Towards Children, Contemporary Economic Policy, 16(3): (2000). The Effects of Beer Taxes on Physical Child Abuse, Journal of Health Economics, 19(2): Mast, B., B. Benson, and D. Rasmussen (1999). Beer Taxation and Alcohol-Related Traffic Fatalities, Southern Economic Journal, 66(2): Miczek, Klaus, Joseph DeBold, Margaret Haney, Jennifer Tidey, Jeffrey Vivian, and Elise Weerts (1994). Alcohol, Drugs of Abuse, Aggression, and Violence in Understanding and Preventing Violence, Volume 3, edited by Albert J. Reiss and Jeffrey A. Roth. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Miron, Jeffrey (1999). Violence and the US Prohibitions of Drugs and Alcohol, American Law and Economics Review, 1: Miron, Jeffrey and Jeffrey Zwiebel (1995). The Economic Case Against Drug Prohibition, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9(4): Nagin, Daniel and Waldfogel, Joel (1998). The Effect of Conviction on Income Through the Life Cycle, International Review of Law and Economics, 18(1): National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) ( ). Digest of State Alcohol-Highway Safety Related Legislation, Washington D.C. Pacula, Rosalie Liccardo and Beau Kilmer (2003). Marijuana and Crime: Is There a Connection Beyond Prohibition? NBER Working Paper # Pernanen, Kai (1991). Theoretical Aspects of the Relationship Between Alcohol Use and Crime, in Drinking and Crime: Perspectives on the Relationships between Alcohol Consumption and Criminal Behavior, edited by James J. Collins Jr. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.

33 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 32 Reyes, Jessica (2002). The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime, unpublished manuscript. Saffer, Henry (2001). Substance Abuse Control and Crime: Evidence from the National Household Survey of Drug Abuse, in Economics of Substance Abuse, edited by Michael Grossman and Chee-Ruey Hsieh, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Limited. Wechsler, Henry, Jae Eun Lee, John Hall, Alexander Wagenaar, and Hang Lee (2002). Secondhand effects of student alcohol use reported by neighbors of colleges: the role of alcohol outlets, Social Science and Medicine, 55: Wolfgang, Marvin E. and Rolf B. Strohm (1956). The Relationship Between Alcohol and Criminal Homicide, Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 17:

34 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 33 Table 1 Descriptive Statistics, Variable Sample Mean Pre-Reform Age-specific Arrest Ratio: year old males DUI.079 Public Drunkenness & Disorderly Conduct.183 Vandalism.317 Property Crimes (Burglary, Larceny, Motor Vehicle Theft).297 Violent Crimes (Murder, Rape, Robbery, Aggravated Assault).182 Pre-Reform Age-specific Arrest Ratio: year old males DUI.124 Public Drunkenness & Disorderly Conduct.141 Vandalism.149 Property Crimes (Burglary, Larceny, Motor Vehicle Theft).131 Violent Crimes (Murder, Rape, Robbery, Aggravated Assault).137 Zero Tolerance Law.13 Drinking Age = Per capita income (in 2001 dollars) 25,717 Percent of state age Beer tax (federal + state in 2001 dollars).80 State unemployment rate (percent) 6.84 Presence of a.08 BAC limit for adults.08 Presence of a.10 BAC limit for adults.74 Presence of an administrative license revocation law.31 Means for the policy variables and state demographics represent those used in the property crime model for year olds. As the number of police agencies reporting data for each category of crime differs slightly from year to year, the variable means are slightly different from model to model.

35 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 34 Table 2 ZT Laws Increased year old DUI Arrest Ratio OLS Estimation, Dependent Variable is Age-Specific Arrest Ratio Adult males, (1) (2) year olds year olds DUI Pre-Reform Mean of Arrest Ratio Zero Tolerance 0.004* (0.002) (0.002) Log Beer Tax (0.006) (0.006) N R-squared Controls For: Police Agency and Year Fixed X X Effects? Other alcohol control policies? X X Demographic, price, and X X macroeconomic controls? * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%. Standard errors throughout are clustered at the state level.

36 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 35 Table 3 DUI Increases Were More Important in Areas with Less Public Transportation Each Column is a Separate Model OLS Estimation, Dependent Variable is Age-Specific Arrest Ratio (18-20) Adult males, Percent of MSA population age 16+ that takes public transportation to work: Pre-reform mean: Fraction of year old arrests for DUI, violent, and property crime that are DUI DUI Pre-reform mean: Fraction of adult DUI arrests attributable to year olds (1) (2) (3) Medium (2-6%) Low (less than 2%) High (greater than 6%) Zero Tolerance 0.008* (0.003) (0.003) (0.003) Log Beer Tax (0.010) (0.010) (0.014) N R-squared Controls For: Police Agency and Year Fixed X X X Effects? Other alcohol control policies? X X X Demographic, price, and X X X macroeconomic controls? * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%. Standard errors are clustered throughout at the state level, except for Column (2).

37 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 36 Table 4 ZT Laws Reduced year old Nuisance Crime Arrest Ratios OLS Estimation, Dependent Variable is Age-Specific Arrest Ratio Adult males, (1) (2) year olds year olds Public Drunkenness & Disorderly Conduct Pre-Reform Mean of Arrest Ratio Zero Tolerance * (0.004) (0.003) Log Beer Tax (0.010) (0.010) N R-squared Vandalism Pre-Reform Mean of Arrest Ratio Zero Tolerance * (0.006) (0.003) Log Beer Tax (0.020) (0.008) N R-squared Controls For: Police Agency and Year Fixed X X Effects? Other alcohol control policies? X X Demographic, price, and X X macroeconomic controls? * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%. Standard errors throughout are clustered at the state level.

38 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 37 Table 5 ZT Laws Reduced year old Property Crime Arrest Ratio OLS Estimation, Dependent Variable is Age-Specific Arrest Ratio Adult males, (1) (2) year olds year olds Violent Crime Pre-Reform Mean of Arrest Ratio Zero Tolerance (0.005) (0.002) Log Beer Tax (0.014) (0.007) N R-squared Property Crime Pre-Reform Mean of Arrest Ratio Zero Tolerance * (0.005) (0.003) Log Beer Tax (0.014) (0.006) N R-squared Controls For: Police Agency and Year Fixed X X Effects? Other alcohol control policies? X X Demographic, price, and X X macroeconomic controls? * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%. Standard errors throughout are clustered at the state level.

39 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 38 Property Crime Table 6 ZT Laws and Property Crime Reductions by Single Year of Age OLS Estimation, Dependent Variable is Age-Specific Arrest Ratio Adult males, (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) 18 yr olds 19 yr olds 20 yr olds 22 yr olds 23 yr olds 24 yr olds Pre-Reform Mean of Arrest Ratio Zero Tolerance * ** (0.002) (0.002) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) Log Beer Tax (0.008) (0.005) (0.004) (0.003) (0.003) (0.002) N R-squared Controls For: Police Agency and X X X X X X Year Fixed Effects? Other alcohol X X X X X X control policies? Demographic, X X X X X X price, and macroeconomic controls? * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%. Standard errors throughout are clustered at the state level.

40 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 39 Table 7 ZT Laws and Specific Types of Property Crime Each Column is a Separate Model OLS Estimation, Dependent Variable is Age-Specific Arrest Ratio (18-20) Adult males, (1) (2) (3) Burglary Larceny Motor Vehicle Theft Pre-Reform Mean of Arrest Ratio Zero Tolerance ** (0.008) (0.005) (0.008) Log Beer Tax (0.025) (0.015) (0.029) N R-squared Controls For: Police Agency and Year Fixed X X X Effects? Other alcohol control policies? X X X Demographic, price, and X X X macroeconomic controls? * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%. Standard errors throughout are clustered at the state level

41 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 40 Table 8 Property Crime Reductions and City Size Each Column is a Separate Model OLS Estimation, Dependent Variable is Age-Specific Arrest Ratio (18-20) Adult males, (1) (2) (3) (4) 100, ,000 to 99,999 10,000 to 24,999 Under 10,000 Pre-reform mean of Arrest Ratio Zero Tolerance * * * (0.005) (0.005) (0.006) (0.007) Log Beer Tax (0.016) (0.015) (0.031) (0.034) N R-squared Controls For: Police Agency and X X X X Year Fixed Effects? Other alcohol X X X X control policies? Demographic, X X X X price, and macroeconomic controls? * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%. Standard errors are clustered throughout at the state level.

42 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 41 Table 9 ZT Effects for College and University Police Departments Each Column is a Separate Model OLS Estimation, Dependent Variable is Age-Specific Arrest Ratio (18-20) Adult males, (1) (2) (3) DUI Property Violent Pre-reform mean of Arrest Ratio Zero Tolerance (0.024) (0.026) (0.047) Log Beer Tax (0.100) (0.087) (0.189) N R-squared Controls For: Police Agency and Year Fixed X X X Effects? Other alcohol control policies? X X X Demographic, price, and X X X macroeconomic controls? significant at 10%; * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%. Standard errors are clustered throughout at the state level. Regressions are unweighted.

43 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 42 Table 10 Robustness of the Property Crime Reductions Each Column is a Separate Model OLS Estimation, Dependent Variable is Age-Specific Arrest Ratio (18-20) (Unless otherwise specified) Adult males, (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Baseline Dependent Variable is Log (Arrest Ratio) Dependent Variable is Arrests Arrests 25+ Dependent Variable is Arrests Total male arrests (incl. juv.) Longer Time Period ( ) Agencies Reporting Data Full 12 Months of Year Pre-reform mean of Arrest Ratio Zero Tolerance * * * * * (0.005) (0.021) (0.015) (0.002) (0.006) (0.005) Log Beer Tax (0.014) (0.069) (0.052) (0.009) (0.016) (0.015) N R-squared Controls For: Police Agency and X X X X X X Year Fixed Effects? Other alcohol X X X X X X control policies? Demographic, X X X X X X price, and macroeconomic controls? significant at 10%; * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%. Standard errors are clustered throughout at the state level.

44 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 43 Table 11 ZT Laws Not Associated with Observable Measures of Police Enforcement Dependent Variables are Police Expenditure and # Sworn Police per capita Each Column is a Separate Model OLS Estimation (1) (2) Log (Police Expenditure per capita) Log (Sworn Police per 10,000 population) Pre-reform mean $ Zero Tolerance (0.015) (0.012) N R-squared Controls For: State and Year Fixed Effects? X X Other alcohol control policies? X X Demographic, price, and X X macroeconomic controls? Standard errors are clustered throughout at the state level.

45 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 44 Appendix Table 1 Number of States With Zero Tolerance Laws for Youth Year # States with ZEROTOL Law

46 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 45 Appendix Table 2 Reproducing the Key Results in Joksch and Jones (1993) Each Line is a Separate Estimation OLS Estimation, Dependent Variable is Age-Specific Arrest Ratio (18-20) Adult males, (1) (2) Vandalism Disorderly Conduct Pre-Reform Mean Drinking Age = (0.006) (0.005) N R-squared Controls For: Police Agency and Year Fixed X X Effects? Other alcohol control policies? X X Demographic, price, and X X macroeconomic controls? significant at 10%; * significant at 5%; ** significant at 1%. Standard errors are clustered throughout at the state level.

47 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 46 Figure 1: Percent of Total Male Arrests By Age ( ) Age Property Violent DUI

48 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p. 47 Figure 2: ZT Laws and BAC Levels BAC Old Level (Adults) 1 4 Impaired Level New Level (Youth) Pre-ZT: Pull Over Groups 1 and 2, Arrest Only Group 1 Post-ZT: Pull Over and Arrest Groups 4 and 5

49 Heavy Alcohol Use and Crime: p Figure 3: Estimated Effects of ZT Laws by Single Year of Age (from Table 6) Change in Arrest Ratio Age ZT estimate 95% ci 95% ci