Yale law professor John Donohue, writing in The Economists' Voice, argues that Clinton's policies (primarily the COPS program) were more effective against crime than the Bush administration's policies have been. While his thesis might well be correct, his evidence is unconvincing.

First, and least important, Donohue offers no actual evidence on crime rates. Might this be because crime has remained at a relatively low level during the Bush years?

Second, Donohue bases his argument almost exclusively on the decline of the COPS program. (The only other factor considered is the assault weapons ban.) However, he ignores other factors related to crime such as higher unemployment associated with the 2001 recession. (Georgia's David Mustard and his co-authors have a nice paper on the relationship between labor market conditions and crime.)

Third, and most importantly, Donohue's desire to pin the blame for the withering of the COPS program on Bush ignores an inconvenient little fact--Bush didn't become president until January 20, 2001 and his first budget didn't become effective until October 1, 2001 (or even later if Congress missed the deadlines in its budget process). Why does this matter? Because the decline in COPS started before 2001. Examining Donohue's Figure 1 reveals that the decline in police per 100,000 population (which Donohue evidently thinks is affected solely by the COPS program) actually started to decline in 1999. OOPS! Viewed in terms of the funding for COPS--depicted in Donohue's Figure 2--the declne actually started back in 1998. Moreover, the largeest decline (from some $1.2 billion to $500 million occured between 1999 and 2000. (Remind me again who was president then?) While Donohue is correct that "COPS hiring funds have fallen every year Bush has been in office," his argument that Bush is uniquely responsible for "undermining Clinton gains" is highly selective.

Finally, suppose for a moment (but only a moment) that Donohue's argument that Bush is solely responsible for defunding COPS is correct. He seems to implicitly assume that the program's existence is chiseled in stone regardless of other needs or events. By contrast, one might argue that the crime reductions of the 1990s (which Donohue concedes were due more to "other forces" than to Clinton policy) made reallocating funds from COPS to, say, fighting terrorism a prudent policy.

In sum, this article is a disppointing beginning for The Economists' Voice. If it is an indication of what we can expect in the future, the Russ Roberts's skepticism is warranted.

Follow-up reading: My student Dan Alban and I wrote a COPS piece for the Novermber 2000 Ideas on Liberty. Heritage's David Muhlhausen also has a number of articles (some analysis and others commentary) on COPS. (Note that I've only given Mulhausen's papers a quick read and, although they look pretty good, I cannot vouch for the quality of all of them.)