As policy-makers look for ways to expand opportunities for our state and localities, there’s an interesting piece of information to help inform their decisions.

In this piece, John Hood explains what the empirical research shows us about the relationship between public safety and economic growth.

Careful academic studies of the question seem to suggest that having a high crime rate tends to deter business investment and economic activity in a community. Similarly, of 36 studies published in academic journals since 1990 that examined a possible link between public-safety expenditures and economic growth, 21 found a positive, statistically significant relationship. In some of them, researchers used lagged variables or other techniques to try to figure out what was causing what. Most suggested that public safety does, in fact, lead to stronger economies. In fact, public-safety expenditure was the only category of state and local spending for which a majority of studies found a positive effect on job creation, personal income, or other measure of economic performance.

These findings suggest that for North Carolina’s most-distressed communities to find their way back to prosperity, a necessary first step will be to make public safety a priority when allocating local revenues. To the extent that state revenues are used to assist poorer regions in regaining their economic momentum, ensuring adequate law enforcement and judicial resources ought to be a high priority, as well.