LAM Workshop Series: Daniel Ortega on Policing RCT in Colombia

Title: Police Reform, Training and Crime: Experimental evidence from Colombia’s Plan Cuadrantes

Authors: Juan Felipe García (FIP), Daniel Mejía (UNIANDES) y Daniel Ortega (IESA y CAF)

Abstract: The Plan Nacional de Vigilancia Comunitaria por Cuadrantes (PNVCC) is a new police patrolling program introduced in the eight major cities of Colombia in 2010 by the National Police. The strategy divides the largest cities into small geographical areas (cuadrantes), assigns six policemen to each, establishes a new patrolling protocol involving more community contact, and holds officers accountable for crime in their assigned area. The plan warranted a comprehensive training program for over 9,000 police officers aimed at modifying patrolling protocols and policemen attitudes towards their service. By staggering the training schedule between three randomly chosen cohorts of police stations, we generate experimental variation in the exposure to training and in the effective implementation of the new police protocols induced by the Plan Cuadrantes. Comparing the 4 months immediately after training with the same months from the previous year, we find a significant reduction in several types of crime attributable to the training program, ranging from around .05 of a standard deviation for homicides and home burglaries to .4 of a standard deviation for brawls. These impacts are driven by very large effects in high crime areas (.68 standard deviations) and very small -or zero- effects in low crime neighborhoods. Once we take into account the very high spatial concentration of crime, the implementation of the training program accounts for an overall reduction in homicides of about 20%. We suggest that the training program may have had direct effects on crime, possibly through police motivation, but also through improvements in the program's operation, especially in high crime areas.