Effects of group practice of the Transcendental Meditation program on preventing violent crime in Washington, DC: Results of the national demonstration project, June-July 1993

This paper reports the results of a prospective experiment in which a group of approximately 4,000 participants in the Transcendental Meditation and T M-Sidhi programs of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi assembled in Washington, D.C., fr om June 7 to July 30, 1993. It was hypothesized that levels of violent crim e in the District of Columbia would fall substantially during the Demonstra tion Project, as a result of the group's effect of increasing coherence and reducing stress in the collective consciousness of the District. A 27-memb er Project Review Board comprising independent scientists and leading citiz ens approved the research protocol and monitored the research process. Week ly crime data was derived from database records provided by the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department (DCMPD), which are used in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Statistical analysis considered the effect of weath er variables, daylight, historical crime trends and annual patterns in the District of Columbia, as well as trends in neighboring cities. Consistent w ith previous research, levels of homicides, rapes and assaults (HRA crimes) correlated with average weekly temperature. Robberies approximately follow ed an annually recurring cycle. Time series analysis of 1993 data, controll ing for temperature, showed that HRA crimes dropped significantly during th e Demonstration Project, corresponding with increases in the size of the gr oup; the maximum decrease was 23.3% (p < 2 x 10(-9)) [24.6% using a longer baseline, with 1988-1993 data (p < 3 x 10(-5))], coincident with the peak n umber of participants in the group during the final week of the assembly. W hen the same period in each of the five previous years was examined, no sig nificant decreases in HRA crimes were found. Robberies did not decrease sig nificantly. However, a model that jointly estimated the effect of the Demon stration Project on both HRA crimes and robberies showed a significant redu ction in violent crimes overall of 15.6% (p = 0.0008). Further analysis sho wed that the effect of the coherence-creating group on reducing HRA crimes could not be accounted for by additional police staffing. The time series a nalysis for HRA crimes gave results that are highly robust to alternative m odel specifications, and showed that the effect of the group size was cumul ative and persisted after the Demonstration Project ended. Also, calculatio n of the steady stare gain based on the time series model predicted that a permanent group of 4,000 coherence-creating experts in the District would h ave a long-term effect of reducing HRA crimes by 48%.