The Effect of Adult Entertainment Establishments on Sex Crime: Evidence from New York City

Abstract

Este artículo estudia el efecto de los establecimientos de enretenimiento de adultos sobre las violaciones sexuales. Encuentra que dichos establecimientos disminuyen las violaciones sexuales. El mecanismo más plausible por los datos para explicar este efecto es que potenciales violadores se vuelven clientes de los establecimientos arriba-mencionados.

This paper studies how the presence of adult entertainment establishments affects the incidence of sex crimes, including sexual abuse and rape. We build a daily panel that combines the exact location of unreported sex crimes with the day of opening and exact location of adult entertainment establishments in New York City. We find that these businesses decrease daily sex crime by 13% per police precinct, and have no effect on other types of crimes. The results imply that the reduction is mostly driven by potential sex offenders frequenting these establishments rather than committing crimes. We also rule out the possibility that other mechanisms are driving our results, such as an increase in the number of police officers, a reduction in the number of street prostitutes and a possible reduction in the number of potential victims in areas where these businesses opened. The effects are robust to using alternative measures of sex crimes.