Final Report Summary - ORG STRUCT AND CRIME (Organizational Structure, Police Activity and Crime) Paper 1:To enforce the law and prevent crime, the state must investigate crimes, adjudicate criminal cases, and house criminals upon conviction. These functions are typically undertaken, respectively, by three separate agencies: the police, the court and the prison authority. However, these functions may be organized in a different manner. For instance, in adversariallegal systems the investigative and adjudicative functions are independent of each other, while in inquisitorial legal systems the court is actively involved in investigating facts. Likewise, the investigative function and the function of housing criminal upon conviction may not be independent of each other, as in the case of military prisons, which are often operated by the military police. How do the organizational boundaries between law enforcement agencies affect their activities and crime? To address this question I investigated the consequences of an organizational reform that transferred the responsibility for housing arrestees from the police to the prison authority in Israel, thereby adjusting the organizational boundaries between the two agencies. Before the reform, arrestees were housed either at local police stations or at regional jails controlled and managed by the police. After the reform, arrestees were no longer housed at police stations, and the control over regional jails was transferred to the prison authority along with the personnel working at these jails.The research design and the data I used allowed me to identify the effects of the reform on various measures of police activity and crime. I document strong evidence that this organizational change led to an increase in the number of arrests and to a decrease in the number of reported crimes, with these effects concentrated in more minor crimes. The reform also led to a decrease in the quality of arrests, measured by the likelihood of being charged following an arrest. These findings are consistent with the idea that the reform externalized the cost of housing arrestees from the police's perspective, and therefore led the police to increase its activity against crime.Governments around the world dedicate significant parts of their budget to crime prevention, given the high social costs of crime. In recent years, rising budget deficits have placed increased pressure on government budgets. Policymakers are thus looking for ways to reduce public expenditure while maintaining the level of government services. Since the organizational structure of law enforcement agencies has a large effect on police activity and on crime, then organizational structure should be considered an effective policy instrument in the fight against crime. Such a policy instrument may be utilized to increase the effectiveness of the police given cuts in its budget, and thus maintaining or even increasing its activity level.Paper 2: The Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees that “in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.” The right to counsel is also protected by the European Convention on Human Rights (Article 6(3)(c)) and by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Article 47). But what are the actual consequences of the right to counsel for society? To address this question I focus on a legal reform in Israel that extended the right to counsel to indigent suspects in arrest proceedings. Before the reform, only indigent defendants were entitled to publicly provided legal counsel. In other words, before the reform, indigent defense was provided once one was charged, while after the reform indigent defense was provided earlier in the process, upon one’s arrest. Thus, the extension of the right to counsel to suspects may serve as a natural experiment to investigate its social consequences.The research design and the data I used allowed me to identify the effects of the reform on various measures of police activity and crime. Using the staggered regional rollout of the reform, I find that the reform reduced arrest duration and the likelihood of arrestees being charged. I also find that the reform reduced the number of arrests made by the police. Lastly, I find that the reform increased crime. These findings indicate that the right to counsel improves suspects’ situation, but discourages the police from making arrests, which results in higher crime.In addition to providing a better understanding of the social consequences of the right to counsel, these findings have implications for the policy debate around the scope of the right to counsel. Unlike the United States, other western countries (such as Canada, France and Germany) have a more limited right to counsel. Our findings suggest that, if the social costs of the right to counsel are large, one can make an argument for a more limited right to counsel, of the type provided in those countries. Though the right to counsel is currently awarded in many countries only in criminal cases, there has been a growing demand to extend this right to other realms. In 2006, the American Bar Association passed a resolution that asserted a right to counsel also in civil cases involving “adversarial proceedings where basic human needs are at stake, such as those involving shelter, sustenance, safety, health, or child custody”. Similarly, some have argued for the extension of the right to counsel to deportation proceedings, where currently persons facing deportation have only a privilege to retain counsel at their own expense. That the right to counsel involves not only benefits, but also significant social costs, means that before this right is extended to other realms, more rigorous assessment of its benefits and costs in specific contexts is in order. Professional re-integration and long term career perspectives:I was awarded tenure as a senior lecturer at Hebrew University Faculty of Law, and I was just notified this week that I was promoted from a senior lecturer to the rank of a professor. Receiving the IRG grant allowed me to signal myself out as a dominant young scholar in the Hebrew University Faculty of Law. I have published several other journal articles, including in very prestigious law and economics journals (such as Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Law Review, Tax Law Review and Journal of Empirical Legal Studies). These publications together with the IRG grant helped me initiate an accelerated tenure-track procedure.Receiving the IRG grant also helped me to successfully apply to other awards and scholarship. In particular, I received an individual research grant of approximately $180,000 for the years 2013-2018 as a member in the Center for Empirical Legal Studies which was founded at Hebrew University Faculty of Law, funded by Israeli Centers for Research Excellence and the Israel Science Foundation. Additionally, I won a university grant for incoming researchers ($10,000) and a couple of smaller faculty grants for research. Furthermore, I won three prestigious awards: the Zeltner Prize for Junior Researcher (given by Tel-Aviv University and Rotary-Israel) the Gaaton Award for the best economics research on Israel (given by Bank of Israel and the Israeli Economic Association), and the Birk Prize (given by Hebrew University board of trustees).Receiving the IRG grant also allowed me to set up several collaborations. The two above papers were written in collaboration with two excellent researchers with extensive experience in empirical research: Itai Ater from Tel-Aviv University, and Oren Rigbi from Ben-Gurion University. The work with his has been very rewarding, and we are currently considering two new projects. I have also recently published a paper with Yotam Kaplan from Bar-Ilan University.
