Cost Redundancies for Combating Washington, D.C. Crime

During a time of budget challenges, the Washington, D.C. government has needed to increase appropriations to the public safety and justice title while reducing appropriations to other municipal services. The need to increase policing costs by $1 million to $469.7 million in fiscal year 2012 diverges from the city’s efforts to improve underserved neighborhoods through urban renewal. Although the District’s vision to improve underserved neighborhoods has many goals, reducing crime is a major component. Efforts to reduce crime through policing and urban renewal could overlap if crime is related to several components of urban renewal, and a correlation between lower crime rates and urban renewal projects could advise future budget decisions as to the opportunity cost of funding short term policing efforts at the cost of long-term infrastructure development. To determine if there is a relationship, the numbers of adult arrests in all 431 unit blocks were tested against four major components of urban renewal: the number of bus stops per square mile, commercial development percentage, unemployment percentage, and vacant lot percentage. The four variables were found to be weakly correlated to the number of adult arrests. However, crime was found to increase in areas with higher levels of commercial development and greater number of bus stops. These findings appear to contradict the belief that urban renewal lowers crime in the immediate community. As urban renewal has a mixed impact on crime, District officials may need to consider moving forward with planned projects during a time of increased police costs.