Finc 406 - the Effects of a County Becoming Wet on Crime Rates

Dakota Oxford

FINC 406

January 16, 2016

The Effects of a County becoming Wet on Crime Rates

Intro & Background:

There has been a large shift in alcohol policy throughout the state of texas in the last 20 years. Counties were broken into 3 categories; wet, partially wet, and dry. Wet meaning any form of alcohol is legal to sell throughout every square inch of the county. Partially wet meaning that some jurisdictions, towns and cities were still prohibiting forms of alcohol sales or dry altogether. Dry meaning the sale of alcohol was completely illegal. In 1995 there were 53 completely dry counties in Texas, 251 partially wet counties and not a single fully wet county. A little under 10 years later in 2003 there were now 51 completely dry counties but now there were 35 completely wet counties and 168 partially wet counties. As of November 2015, Texas has 53 completely wet counties, 7 completely dry counties, and 194 partially wet counties. So the question is why has there been such a change.

If you look at the United States as a whole, the vast majority of counties (including entire states), are considered wet. Whereas in the southern region of the United States, there are still plenty of dry and partially wet counties. There has been plenty of research trying to tie widespread alcohol sales to safety and health although there has not been much readily available research that directly compares widespread alcohol sales to crime. Growing up in Texas there has always been a taboo around alcohol sales, even more so than in the South. You can see drive through daquiri stores that dot the “deep south”, although in Texas, this is not a normal occurrence.

Hypothesis & Desired Results:

Why hasn’t Texas caught on with the rest of the nation? Why are the majority of counties partially wet? Why are parts of Texas still hanging on to reminants of the prohibition of alcohol? Therefore I am asking; If a county becomes wet, will there be a statistically significant difference in crime rates than that of a partially wet county? Crime rates are based on the number of offenses per 100,000 people and include murder, robbery, assault, burglery, larceny, auto theft, and rape. What I am trying to uncover is a significant, either higher or lower, fluctuation in crime rates. If there is a spike in crime rates when a county is wet, then the partial prohibition is not unwarranted; although, if there is a drop in  crime rates, then the partial prohibition is unnecessary. Now a rejection of the intended hypothesis, meaning that crime rates remain relatively the same, then again there is not a statistically significant reseaon to keep the partial alcohol prohibition policies.

Data & Methodology:

        The data that will be used for research was compiled from multiple datasets including the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, Texas Population Dataset from the Texas Department of State Health Services, Crime rates and Rape Crime rate datasets from the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission dataset of wet, partially wet, and dry counties. These datasets will be cross referenced and have OLS regression ran. Later in research the data will have multiple regression models ran against them as well. The variables being tested are population per county, crime rate per county, rape crime rate per county, wet and partially wet counties. Two tests were run for a base model with the year 2014 statistics. The first model was partially wet counties and wet counties ran against crime and rape crime rate. The second model that was ran has the crime and rape crime rates against population per county.