"Do National Guard Deployments Reduce Crime? Evidence from the 2025 Deployment in Washington, DC", by Robert Gonzalez, Georgia Institute of Technology (Venue GL 100A)

Abstract: In August 2025, President Trump invoked Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act to deploy National Guard troops across Washington, D.C. This paper examines the short-run effects of the deployment on crime by combining administrative incident data with a triple-differences design that compares changes in crime before and after the August 11 deployment across treated and untreated Police Service Areas (PSAs). The intervention led to declines in robberies, thefts, and motor vehicle thefts, while assaults with dangerous weapons increased. Other violent and property crimes were unchanged. Cost-benefit analysis shows total 30-day benefits of $1.7 million against costs of $90 million. For comparison, an alternative community-based crime monitoring program achieved higher crime-reduction benefits at less than four percent of the cost. This underscores the relative inefficiency of large-scale federal deployments as a crime-control strategy.

Short bio: Robert Gonzalez is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a development economist interested in the role of information-communication technologies (ICTs) and the use of novel GIS data and methods to study conflict, crime, and public health. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his B.A. in Economics from Florida International University. Visit his personal website for more information.