Sustainable City Year Reports 2013-14 (Medford)

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Open Access
The Effect of Neighborhood Watch Programs on Neighborhood Crime in Medford Oregon
(University of Oregon, 2014) Greene, Shannon; Osterholm, John; Fan, Yiqian; Stone, Joe A.;
Over the past decade Medford Oregon expanded their Neighborhood Watch program and increased the number of neighborhood watch groups they have in each section of the city. Using robust panel regression analysis we studied what effect this program had on crime rates of the treated areas. Our data included total number of crimes across 7 years from 2007 to 2013 and across the 7 areas, or beats, recognized by the Medford Police Department, each of which had a varying number of active neighborhood watches over our sample period. Our goal was to use the number of neighborhood watch groups per beat and several other proxy variables to try and estimate how much, if at all, this program is affecting crime rate in Medford. We found that one additional neighborhood watch decreases the crime rate per beat by about 3%, and one additional neighborhood watch per square kilometer decreases the crime rate by about 18%, though there is also evidence of diminishing effects as the number of watches increases in a given area.