The deterrence of crime through private security efforts: Theory and evidence

Private individuals and entities invest in a wide variety of market-provisioned self-protection devices or services to mitigate their probability of victimization to crime. However, evaluating the effect of such private security measures remains understudied in the economics of crime literature. Unlike most previous studies, the present analysis considers four separate measures of private security: security guards, detectives and investigators, security system installers, and locksmiths. The effects of laws allowing the concealed carrying of weapons are also evaluated. As private security efforts are potentially endogenous to crime rates, dynamic GMM panel data models are estimated in addition to structural (non-instrumented) regressions. The empirical results suggest that the impact of private security efforts generally varies across crime types, though there appears to be a robust negative relationship between the employment of security system installers and the rate of property offenses.