It really depends on what you use as your comparative variables when you do research to determine whether police prevent crime or not. Police budgets don’t impact the crime rate all that much once you’ve got enough to have a functional police department. But, police presence absolutely does deter crime. Increasing the belief that you’ll get caught doing a crime is the main service police provide with their presence, which is why police visibility in an area decreases crime.
When it comes to gun violence, we’re talking about fairly small and steady change in the numbers over the last 10 years, with a spike thanks to the gun buying in the pandemic. Nearly all the increases in gun violence before the panic buying was from men between the ages of 18 and 30. That’s basically the exact profile of the type of person most sensitive to environmental changes in terms of their willingness/impulses to do crimes.
Anyway so one of the subtle changes from the protests is that police departments just aren’t as willing to project a presence in minority neighborhoods, essentially trying to reduce their responsibility for bad stuff when it happens, so gun violence has gone up sightly in the young male minority group because they likelihood of getting caught feels like it’s gone down.
Look, I totally agree that police budgets are insane and have no justification. They could easily do their job on half the budget, if not less. That extra money would be much better spent on social workers, subsidized housing, and a whole bunch of other shit that would reduce crime a million times better than an MRAP. But, exactly how police do and do not deter crime isn’t as straightforward as a yes or no answer.
It’s also worth noting that crime is at a historic low, and it’s really only very specific types of crime that have seen a very small increase lately.
It really depends on what you use as your comparative variables when you do research to determine whether police prevent crime or not. Police budgets don’t impact the crime rate all that much once you’ve got enough to have a functional police department. But, police presence absolutely does deter crime. Increasing the belief that you’ll get caught doing a crime is the main service police provide with their presence, which is why police visibility in an area decreases crime.
When it comes to gun violence, we’re talking about fairly small and steady change in the numbers over the last 10 years, with a spike thanks to the gun buying in the pandemic. Nearly all the increases in gun violence before the panic buying was from men between the ages of 18 and 30. That’s basically the exact profile of the type of person most sensitive to environmental changes in terms of their willingness/impulses to do crimes.
Anyway so one of the subtle changes from the protests is that police departments just aren’t as willing to project a presence in minority neighborhoods, essentially trying to reduce their responsibility for bad stuff when it happens, so gun violence has gone up sightly in the young male minority group because they likelihood of getting caught feels like it’s gone down.
Look, I totally agree that police budgets are insane and have no justification. They could easily do their job on half the budget, if not less. That extra money would be much better spent on social workers, subsidized housing, and a whole bunch of other shit that would reduce crime a million times better than an MRAP. But, exactly how police do and do not deter crime isn’t as straightforward as a yes or no answer.
It’s also worth noting that crime is at a historic low, and it’s really only very specific types of crime that have seen a very small increase lately.