Categories of Crime

This is from Crime Measures and Housing Prices: an Analysis Using Quantile Regression and Spatial Autocorrelation. Jarl Kallberg & Yoshiki Shimizu.

Another econometric issue is the precise definition of crime rate.^Footnote12 The empirical studies address various categories of crime. A number analyze total crime rates,^Footnote13 which thus equates murder with minor crimes such as graffiti. Others rely solely on property crimes,^Footnote14 burglaries etc. In general the results vary significantly by crime type, but not in a systematic manner. For example, Gibbons (2004) determines that vandalism, but not burglary crimes, negatively influences housing prices; Ihlanfeldt and Mayock (2010b) finds that only violent crime has a negative influence on housing values; Ihlanfeldt and Mayock (2010a) documents that only robbery and aggravated assault have a significant negative impact on property values; Braakmann (2012) observes that anti-social behavior and violent crime depress housing prices, but drug crimes do not; Ceccato and Wilhelmsson (2020) finds that vandalism rates have the greatest impact on housing prices. One can easily hypothesize that vandalism has a strong impact because of its visibility. In addition, the “broken windows” literature in criminology posits that enforcing petty crime (the reverse of current policy in Seattle and many other major US cities) can lead to reduction in major crimes.^Footnote15