'No consistent association' between police funding and crime rates in Canada, study indicates
'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.
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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.