The Impact of the Castle Doctrine on Crime Rates in Texas: Policy Recommendations and Public Health Implications

摘要

An amendment to the Castle Doctrine was implemented in Texas in 2007. The amendment allows the residents of Texas no obligation to retreat prior to using a weapon for protecting oneself, one's belongings, and/or one's property. The objective of the study is to examine whether the Castle Doctrine had an impact on individual crime rates, consolidated violent and consolidated property crime rates, and the overall combined crime rate as the dependent variables. The econometric method of analysis employed in this study is an interrupted time series regression with the line of interruption separating pre-/postimplementation periods marked in the year 2007 for time frames 1998-2006 (preimplementation years) and 2007-2016 (postimplementation years). The independent variables were time, the implementation of the Castle Doctrine-the intervention, and time after the intervention-the postimplementation intervention. Findings of the study indicated an increase in the individual crime rates of murders and rapes and a simultaneous decrease in individual rates of property crimes. Moreover, the analysis detected a decrease in the consolidated violent crime rate of 0.03% (95% confidence interval [CI: -0.012, 0.010]; p = .285) and a decrease in the consolidated property crime rate of 1.81% (95% CI [-0.104, 0.118]; p = .391). Conclusively, a decrease in the overall combined crime rate of 2.31% (95% CI [-0.116, 0.207]; p = .362) was detected over the analyzed time frame. The findings of the study denoted a decrease in the property crime rate that prospectively connects to the likelihood of the deterrence effect, which may imply that perpetrators may have been discouraged to invade properties due to notion of encountering armed homeowners.