Police Pay and Performance / [US] National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2007
http://nber.com/digest/jan07/w12202.html
Matt Nesvisky
"Police performance … declines sharply when officers lose arbitration cases. The per capita number of crimes cleared (crimes resulting in arrests) is 12 percent higher in the months following arbitration rulings in favor of police officers." "Crime doesn't pay" may be a debatable axiom, but new evidence strongly suggests that the more crime-fighters are paid, the better they will combat crime. In Pay, Reference Points, and Police Performance (NBER Working Paper No. 12202), Alexandre Mas maintains that when police officers are awarded salaries below their desires and expectations, both arrest rates and average sentence length will decline, but when police receive their salary demands, arrest rates will rise."