Crime Where on one hand, it can accurately be concluded that the challenges that are faced by cities have substantially increased due to the recession, it would be inaccurate to suggest that it has caused them. Long-term commitments and service levels have been offered in the past by Governments when it was well-known it would be incredibly hard to deliver on such promises. These include healthcare coverage schemes after retirement and employee pensions. Furthermore, cities have been lacking behind in updating their current infrastructure regularly as well as not making significant improvements to keep in pace with the targeted rates of growth (IBM, 2011). Another important factor that determines any city's success is the crime. Less funding in policing has an adverse effect on the overall living standards of city.

Cities are now increasingly in the search for more viable cost effective opportunities as they are simultaneously facing the challenges of citizen dissatisfaction with higher taxes as well as flat growth. The fundamental requirements of the cities are as expected, not being solved by the occasional victims such as pension fund refinancing, labor furloughs, and reductions across-the-board. It needs to be dutifully taken into account by the city officials if there are any other substantial ways in which costs can be cut down so that they can deliver their services effectively and efficiently (IBM, 2011).

Dependent variable: Crime

Independent Variable: Stopping rising Crime rate

Control variable: The amount of Government spending on Law Enforcement

Tentative hypothesis: Crime rates can be halted if the level of Government spending on law enforcement accordingly increases.

Integrated Literature Review

Article 1: Cashing the Public Safety Dividend: Re-Calibrating Spending on Police Services in an Era of Declining Crime Rates

Business models need to be restructured by the cities towards more sustainable models that have a focus on long run growth that would result in sustainable growth instead of short run measures that would simply be a show for preserving prior levels of service. The future success of cities depends on their respective capability to sustain economic growth while it is increasingly being witnessed that such sectors that can boost growth are being neglected. These include public infrastructure and economic development, which are considered to be the backbone of sustainable long-term oriented growth. Instead, long-term investment ventures are being currently ignored in the hope that growth in revenues would occur sometime in the near future (IBM, 2011). For this purpose, it is important to create a city that offers peaceful and crime-free environment. Higher investment in any locality is only possible if people are sure that their investment would be safe. This surety can only be created when policing is strong is sufficiently funded.

For supporting all the required operations, future revenues are required, and they cannot be generated until and unless investments are made in the infrastructure of the city. Continuous repetitive budget deficits will lead to less growth, less investment, and eventually, more cuts. The reversal of this disinvestment cycle is incredibly difficult. While "Fiscal death spiral" might appear quite alarming, it is predicted not to be so far off (IBM, 2011).

Research question

The objective of this research is respectively illustrating the methods in which the approaches can be utilized. Police Services will be focused in this regard. In the budgets of municipal governments, the allocation to the Police Services in substantial, equivalent to about 35% of the general funds available for operation. Fire Emergency services on the other hand appear to be half of the level of spending carried out on the Police Services (see Figure 2). For incurring savings in the budget, most cities tend to ignore the vast amount of opportunities in the Police Services sector. The allocation of resources needs to be reconsidered thoroughly as broader impacts are highly evident (IBM, 2011).

Research design

For accurately assessing the effectiveness of the city services, this data can be more vigorously utilized. This would help in making better allocation decisions. Furthermore, such systems can be utilized for driving Meta models that have been designed for assessing how a certain family affects urban results. For instance, rather than having an exclusive focus on how the quality of the school affects educational achievement, cities can now more collectively take into account a large number of factors for instance the level of criminal activity in the area, social service interventions, and neighborhood health. Through utilizing such approaches, cities will be able to allocate resources to certain services that have the highest potential yield of returns through measuring the enhancements that will be incurred in feasible outcomes (IBM, 2011).

Whereas local governments spend excessively on Police Services in order to achieve higher standards of public safety, it has often been witnessed that such spending alone does not drive public safety results;
2. Public safety is complete set of economic as well as social conditions, most of which are completely unrelated to policing activities;

3. Whereas the rates of crime have been substantially decreasing over the last 20 years, the level of spending on Police Services continues to rise at an alarming rate, sometimes, even exceeding the growth rate of revenues.

4. It should now be taken into consideration that economic development and infrastructure needs to invested in as such sectors promote sustainable growth as well are themselves major contributors to public safety (IBM, 2011). The amount that is spent on Police Service should be in accordance with the level of crime.

This will be called "cashing the public safety dividend." There are numerous opportunities available to the local governments. The main proposition is that if cities are to remain confined to the level of limited future growth, they will also have to identify paths through which urban outcomes will be achieved. If those outcomes such as a healthy neighborhood, an educated workforce, and public safety have to be achieved, more needs to be spent on direct services both efficiently and effectively. The investments should change from consumables to real sustainable investments. The Police Services would be a good place to start from (IBM, 2011).

Article 2: The Effect of Question Wording on Public Support for Government Spending

The General Social Survey has been including questions since 1973 that involve inquiring from the public how they perceive the policies of the government. Such items of spending have also played substantial roles in gaining the level of public support for fiscal involvement in sectors such as foreign aid, education, aid to minorities, and defense. However, it can relatively be argues that since various labels can be utilized for describing such spending items, each signified through a different symbol, words might have played an important role in gathering support for such issues as labels usually result in different responses (Rasinski, 1989).

It becomes more complicated due to the manner in which the spending items have been worded. Whereas, some spending had been described simply as label presentations for instance welfare and space exploration, others had been described as possibly achieving desirable outcomes such as controlling the crime rate, or improving the environment which is altogether very vague. It also appeared prudent to be questioning if such developments played a part in influencing the responses (Rasinski, 1989).

Research question

The research question for this paper circulates around acknowledging the relative impact of the wording experiments in questions on the General Social Survey spending items.

Research design

Multinomial logic analysis has been used for examining the effects of the different wording in questions and the responses that were receive in response to such spending items. 3 Category response variables were involved in the analysis for every particular item in a year, spending too much, about right, or too little.). These variables were representing political ideology education level, respondent gender, and wording variations. According to the study of Rasinski (1989), there was a trilogy made for the status of education and the political system. For instance, the sample of every year was classified into three segments approximately. The errors in the techniques of randomly selecting the forms were corrected through the incorporation of suitable weight variable as explained in the GSS codebook. Afterwards, these weights were used in all the stated percentages and statistical figures. While doing the analysis for a specific item related to spending; the 'don't know' answers given by a fewer respondents were omitted.

Research findings and conclusions

It has been stated by Rasinski (1989) that despite the existence of a number of connections among the words and their underlying features, no connection was constant in the period of last three years whereas the sole connection which was constant for one problem was only over the period of two years. Therefore, these connections would not be discussed in this report any more but can be accessed from some other place. The evaluation on the query related to the wording experimentation conducted on the General Social Survey spending objects indicates constant impact of the wording on numerous problems over the period of three years. It has been found through investigation on the kinds of wording that even trivial variations can influence the answers. Conversely,…