'No consistent association' between police funding and crime rates in Canada, study indicates
There's "no consistent association" between police funding and crime rates across the country, according to a published study by University of Toronto researchers.
No surprise here, but I'm glad to see a study finally being done in Canada. Expecting police forces to prevent crime instead of just responding to it is like expecting emergency rooms to handle all preventative care.
Policing might have preventative effect on more opportunistic crimes. Crimes that aren't driven by need or mental state. I think you're right about the rest.
Defund the police
How about a study associating wealth inequality.
Wow, I wouldn't be surprised by little connection or uneven, but none?
I'm guessing the important police work is carried out far from the local level with programs targeting organised crime and similar. Apparently the local guys write tickets and that's it. I would have at least expected they'd help by showing up to drunken brawls before they escalate, but apparently not.
The thing to be careful about here is it only spans about 10 years, and it’s based on reported crime rates. That means you get somewhat skewed results because lots of people don’t bother reporting minor crimes thinking nothings going to happen anyway. You may not ever hear back about that police report for your stolen bike, but decisions do get made based on the aggregated reports. You also get things like they make targeted enforcement effort, maybe in a rough neighbourhood, or targeting a specific type of crime that seems to be on the rise and you see the reported crime rate rise because of that effort. We would also expect it to be a lagging metric, an increase in budget doesn’t always mean immediate results. It takes time to decide where to use that increase in funding, maybe time to source new equipment and train officers on its use, maybe they’re able to hire more officers but there’s a training period before you see the results of increased staffing. If budgets aren’t committed ahead of time the department might be conservative about spending on things like increasing the workforce that creates and ongoing cost vs programs that can be rolled back if the budget falls, or capital expenditures that provide value beyond the initial cost.
Social science is often slippery like that. This is still pretty suggestive, though.
Actually, in most cases having fewer police on the streets leads to LESS petty crime.
This is because cops tend to spook people, so everyone (including the innocent, law abiding citizens) will leave areas that are patrolled.
This creates the ideal scenario for crime: there are few/no witnesses around for a while after the cops come by.
In pretty much every case I am aware of where cops go on strike and stop doing regular beat patrols, crime goes DOWN.
Is there documentation of that somewhere?
Canada spends a LOT less on policing than the US and has MUCH less crime. Crime severity is basically half in Canada, and per capita police spending is half. For example, the safest major city in North America is Toronto.
Not coincidentally, Canada also has better social services like public healthcare, more equitable access to schooling, and higher social mobility. This is the argument for defunding the police. We need police, but other things have a much bigger effect on safety.
That's literally impossible to be true. Maybe if their dataset was only police depts where they are receiving between 200% and 300% of what they need to maintain operations. But there's no way a community with literally no police at all wouldn't have a higher crime rate than a basic minimal police force operating at like 80% funding.
The crime rate probably wouldn't change, just the reporting of crime. It's not like law enforcement really prevents much crime.
If people know a community has literally no law enforcement, they would flock to that place to do crimes. A certain minimum level acts as a deterrent. I think what the study really showed is that there are diminishing returns past a certain threshold amount of funding. And that most or all police depts are well past that threshold.
How is it impossible to be true?
I'm not sure how you could make this argument without making assumptions about base crime rates.
Imagine a town that every person is a police officer. Think there won't be any crime? I'd argue there'd be the same if not more than one with no police officers, just different types. There'd be no reporting of crime in the police town though...
When was the last time you needed the police? I've had four interactions with police in the past 5 years. Two times they banged on my door to provide them with video while investigating a break in and an assault. The other two times they totally ignored our stolen vehicle and a suspicious death. Fuck the police, just sell them off to Amazon or Walmart.
You're getting downvoted by the ACAB brigade. But you're absolutely right. If there is zero enforcement of the Rule of Law, then the Rule of Law doesn't exist. Granted cops are only a portion of that mechanism (legal system and legislators and general societal acceptance of these institutions also required.)
You could run an experiment -- remove all cops from Calgary, but keep cops in Edmonton. The crime rate might be similar to background in the first year, but in the third year? Tenth year? I'd suspect that suddenly people would be clamouring for the police to enforce laws in Calgary again.
(I picked those cities because there was a remarkable experiment performed at one point where Calgary stopped fluorinating their water supply, while Edmonton continued. The cavity rates diverged rapidly until political pressure returned fluorination.)
Anyway, a background level of policing is required for Peace, Order, and Good Governance. Not zero police. Not a police state either.
This seems like it would be obvious. Police don't prevent crime; they respond to it.
I think the theory is there is some level of "deterrent" at play here. Always seemed like a stretch, and this just looks to reinforce that.
Pretty sure all it really deters is speeding within eyesight of the police car.
There can be a deterrent effect in very specific situations. At crowded public events, like a parade, a police presence can lower crime at that event. Sometimes. But otherwise, police don’t work like that.