The world's religions are very diverse, but one thing that they all (or almost all?) share is an aversion to crime. For example, Christian religions have the Ten Commandments of things one 'shalt not' do, most of which relate to some crime or other. So, perhaps areas that are more religious experience less crime? The challenge in testing this is that religion, or religiosity, is so intimately related to many other variables in society, that extracting the impact of religiosity ceteris paribus is next to impossible.
Not to be deterred, that is what this recent working paper by Wang-Sheng Lee (Monash University), Umair Khalil (Deakin University), and David Johnston (Monash University) attempts to do. They have an interesting setting in which to investigate this research question. As they explain:
In this paper, we study a city-wide shock to religiosity engendered by the celebrated visit of Pope Francis to Philadelphia. In September 2015, Pope Francis delivered a highly anticipated Papal Mass to an estimated one million people in the city-center of Philadelphia. In addition, the Pope visited a correctional facility, where he interacted with inmates and made a statement linking religious behavior, or lack thereof, to criminality. Our work explores whether the Papal visit significantly reduced criminal behavior in Philadelphia in the short- and medium-term.
The theory here is that the Papal visit increased religious feeling, or the salience of religion, in the population, making them less inclined to commit crimes. Lee et al. use a difference-in-differences strategy, comparing the difference in reported crimes between the 12 weeks before and 12 weeks after the Papal visit in 2015, with the difference in reported crimes in the same weeks the previous four years (2010-2014). They do this analysis separately for different types of crime, both minor and serious. In their first analysis, treating only the week of the Pope's visit as being impacted, they find that there is:
...a significant reduction in daily drug offences per census tract of 0.021 and a significant reduction in daily fraud/corruption offences per census tract of 0.014, during the week of the visit. Relative to the sample means (day-census tract average number of crimes), this equates to a 18.9% and 18.2% reduction in drug and fraud offences, respectively. There are no discernible impacts for other offences.
Lee et al. then extent the length of time where the city is 'treated', and at the maximum length of 12 weeks they find that:
...there are significant reductions for simple assaults (0.027 or 15.9%), drug offences (0.028 or 25.2%) and fraud/corruption (0.016 or 20.8%).
Next, looking at different census tracts, Lee et al. find that the effects are smaller in census tracts that were further from the Papal mass, larger in census tracts that have a landmark church (where religion is likely to be particularly important, and larger in census tracts with higher poverty rates and with larger youth populations.
Third, Lee et al. do an event study, which rather than estimating the average effect over the entire treatment period, estimates the effect separately in each week. In that analysis, they find that:
...for simple assaults... we find a significant 0.038 (22.4%) reduction. However, this effect is found only for Week 1. On the other hand, we find substantial reductions in drug offences... that persist through Week 5 where the effect is a 0.030 (27.0%) reduction.
Finally, in a neat twist in the paper, they do a similar study which, instead of the Pope's visit, uses a visit by Barack Obama later the same year. The purpose of this analysis is to show that the results of the Pope's visit aren't just down to increased police presence in the city at the time of the visit. If that were the case, they should find a similar impact of Obama's visit, when police presence would also be very high. In the case of Obama's visit, Lee et al. find a much smaller impact (although still statistically significant) on 'Part 1 offences' (the more minor offences).
So, the Pope's visit reduced crime. The Pope is a crime fighter!
Or perhaps not. There is an obvious problem with this paper. Lee et al. use reported crime. Reported crime might decrease because crime has decreased, and so there are fewer crimes for people to report. Alternatively, reported crime might decrease because, even though crime has not decreased, people are reporting it less. Lee et al. aren't able to distinguish between these two possibilities.
I think a decrease in reported crime is particularly likely in this context too. If the Papal visit increases the salience of religion in people's lives, then perhaps they feel more positive about other people, even those who have wronged them. They may be more likely to 'turn the other cheek' (a saying that is literally taken from the Bible, Matthew 5:39). So, perhaps the victims of minor crimes are less likely to report them. On the other hand, victims of serious crimes would still report those (there is only so far that cheek-turning can go). So, in the analysis we would see a decrease in reported minor crimes, but no decrease in reported serious crimes, which is exactly what Lee et al. find.
So, maybe the Pope isn't a crime fighter after all. Perhaps he only deters victims from reporting minor crimes.
[HT: Josh for the paper, Craiyon for the AI-generated Pope-as-Batman image]
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