It's the phone, stupid: mobiles and murder

• Autor(a) principal: Edlund, Lena
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Outros Autores: Machado, Cecilia
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do FGV (FGV Repositório Digital)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/10438/31104
• topic: Mobile telephony; Illegal Drug Dealing; Telefonia móvel; Comércio ilegal de drogas; Economia; Telefonia celular; Tráfico de drogas

US homicide rates fell sharply in the early 1990s, a decade that also saw the mainstreaming of cell phones – a concurrence that may be more than a coincidence, we propose. Cell phones may have undercut turf-based street dealing, thus undermining drug-dealing profits of street gangs, entities known to engage in violent crime. Studying county-level data for the years 1970-2009 we find that the expansion of cellular phone service (as proxied by antenna-structure density) lowered homicide rates in the 1990s. Furthermore, effects were concentrated in urban counties; among Black or Hispanic males; and more gang/drug-associated homicides.