Legalised Prostitution And Crime
Earlier in the year, I wrote a post about red light districts and house prices. Based on data from Amsterdam, Erasmo Giambona and Rafael Ribas found in a working paper that:
In a 2017 article published the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Paul Bisschop (SEO Economisch Onderzoek), Stephen Kastoryano (University of Mannheim), and Bas van der Klaauw (VU University Amsterdam) look at what happened to city-level crime in the 25 largest cities in the Netherlands when tippelzones were introduced. To be clear:
[HT: Marginal Revolution, in October last year]
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...homes next to prostitution windows are sold at a discount as high as 24%, compared to similar properties outside the RLD...And they found that half or more of the price discount related to crime. The argument is that red light districts attract crime, and that crime reduces local property values. An interesting related question is, if crime is displaced and concentrated in the red light district, what happens to crime overall in the city?
In a 2017 article published the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, Paul Bisschop (SEO Economisch Onderzoek), Stephen Kastoryano (University of Mannheim), and Bas van der Klaauw (VU University Amsterdam) look at what happened to city-level crime in the 25 largest cities in the Netherlands when tippelzones were introduced. To be clear:
[a] tippelzone is a designated legal street prostitution zone where soliciting and purchasing sex is tolerated between strict opening and closing hours at night.Using data from 1994 to 2011, and accounting for the fact that nine Dutch cities opened tippelzones between 1983 and 2004 (and three closed their tippelzones in that time), they find that:
...opening a tippelzone reduces sexual abuse and rape. These results are mainly driven by a 30–40 percent reduction in the first two years after opening the tippelzone... For tippelzones with a licensing system, we additionally find long-term decreases in sexual assaults and a 25 percent decrease in drug-related crime, which persists in the medium to long run.This accords with a theory that prostitution and rape (or sexual abuse) are substitutes for some men. This theory is not new - it actually dates to Thomas Aquinas (according to my earlier post, has a cost in terms of lower house values.
[HT: Marginal Revolution, in October last year]
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