There’s “no consistent association” between police funding and crime rates across the country, according to a published study by University of Toronto researchers.
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.
I tend to agree completely.
Yeah sorry it sounded like I was correcting you, but I meant to say I agree with you too.
Defund the police
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.
How about a study associating wealth inequality.
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.
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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.
How is it impossible to be true?
I’m not sure how you could make this argument without making assumptions about base crime rates.
If the headline is to be believed, then completely abolishing the Toronto police would have 0 impact on crime rates in Toronto. To my mind, it seems impossible that that would be true.
It seems like you maybe thinking this is saying police do nothing, it isn’t.
No consistent association means the data doesn’t back up higher or lower funding having an impact on crime. It doesn’t say anything about rates when the funding is zero or when funding is very high.
I think it means can’t pay to reduce crime, or not pay and expect crime to go up.
Testing for zero would be extremely difficult, because we only have one Toronto sized city in Canada.
I’m guessing here but I suspect that there’s a significant number of places with zero police presence that have very little crime. And this article suggests that there are very well funded police presences where crime still happens.
No consistent association means the data doesn’t back up higher or lower funding having an impact on crime. It doesn’t say anything about rates when the funding is zero or when funding is very high.
Is “zero” not “lower”?
If there’s no zero in the dataset, then we don’t have any zero about data. It could be, for instance, that some police have a large effect, but that you hit diminishing returns incredibly quickly.
That’s literally what I said elsewhere in this thread. People are putting words in my mouth all over this thread but literally all I was saying is that it’s impossible that the headline is true verbatim.
How so? The study showed no consistent association between funding and crime rates. That is true verbatim.
Skim the article, it’s 20 large municipality’s, nowhere is 0 mentioned
Reading is really hard for some people eh?
If the headline is to be believed, then completely abolishing the Toronto police would have 0 impact on crime rates in Toronto.
Did you even try to read the study?
data on municipal police service expenditures from 2010 to 2021 in 20 of the most populous urban municipalities in Canada
In 2019, police services were the top operating expenditure in a majority of the municipalities. Real per capita spending on police services increased in 16 of 20 municipalities from 2010 to 2020. Marked differences are seen in spending between municipalities: in 2019, in 2020 dollars, Vancouver spent $495.84 per capita, whereas Quebec City spent $217.05 per capita.
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.
