A Relationship Between Fines and Violent Crimes

Inspired by the Ferguson, Missouri (MO) riots of 2014, we were motivated to study the influence of city and county revenue generated from fines and forfeitures (primarily traffic violations) on the incidence of violent crimes. For our analysis, we leveraged five orthogonal data sets aggregated at the state level, all concerning calendar year 2013. Resulting from our analysis of rate of searches, stops, and contraband found in seven states, we found a positive linear relationship between fines and violent crimes at the state level. We also found that subsets of the population in certain states are pulled over and searched disproportionately more despite finding relatively less contraband.