Research

Work in progress

• Policing Intimate Partner Violence: Curbing Abuse or Shifting it?
  Policing is frequently posited to be an effective tool to deter perpetrators of intimate partner violence from repeating their abuse. However, abuse in intimate relationships often involves psychological violence and coercive control, which can be difficult to detect as compared to physical violence, but potentially just as harmful. Do criminal sanctions actually deter abusers? Or do perpetrators merely shift from using physical violence to more subtle forms of abuse like coercive control? I study this using granular incident-level police data from the United Kingdom. Results indicate that, on aggregate, charges reduce both physical violence and coercive control, driven largely by pairs of partners who do not file further complaints with the police. However, there is a shift from violence to coercive control among pairs that do return. The severity of the violence experienced, along with police officer characteristics, appear to be instrumental in this shift.

• The Impact of Specialized Courts on Sexual Offences in South Africa
  (with Daniela Horta Saenz)
  Sexual violence is pervasive and challenging to prosecute. As a policy response, specialized courts have been increasingly implemented to accelerate criminal justice while minimizing re-victimization. Yet, causal evidence on their effectiveness remains limited. This paper studies the staggered introduction of specialized courts for sexual offenses (SOCs) in South Africa and their impact on crime and criminal justice outcomes. Using a two-way fixed effects design, we find that SOCs reduce reported rates of sexual offenses by 13%, an effect driven by the most severe cases, such as rape and attempted rape. We provide suggestive evidence that these reductions are stronger in districts with “pure” courts–those that exclusively handle sexual offense cases and fully adhere to the trauma-informed blueprint–as well as in districts with pre-existing specialized clinics for sexual offenses. The stability of reports in less severe forms of abuse indicates that these declines are unlikely to be explained by reduced reporting. However, we do not find evidence of short-run changes in prosecution or conviction rates, or changes in victims propensity to report. Our results suggest that while specialized courts can serve as a powerful deterrent, they may not improve access to justice in the short-run.

Policy Writing

• Oeindrila Dube, Smriti Ganapathi, Soeren J. Henn, and James A. Robinson. 2020.
  “Farmer-Herder Conflict in Nigeria’s Middle Belt: Evidence from 288 Communities.”
  Policy Report.