noquarter53 t1_j2f03ch wrote
Reply to comment by Turbo2x in DC's murder rate has -11% YoY change from 2021. Wanted to post this for some more positive news around crime, since negative news tends to dominate this space. by donemessedup123
Not sure if you can make the case that crime is trending down when murders increased 6 out of the last 10 years pre pandemic.
A professional, trustworthy police force is just as valuable, and there's research that shows more visible cops reduce crime.
>adding a new police officer to a city prevents between 0.06 and 0.1 homicides, which means that the average city would need to hire between 10 and 17 new police officers to save one life a year.
Mental health and economic opportunities are important, but there's no shortage of jobs in the DC area. And, I would speculate that DC dovotes more resources towards mental health than a lot of cities.
Turbo2x t1_j2f4eqz wrote
I love when people cite this study because I get to gush over how notoriously flimsy it is! They estimate cops reduce between 0.06 and 0.1 homicides which is a huge variance that they just handwave away and hope no one notices, but everyone rolls with the 0.1 figure because it sounds better. The lower end of this figure means you have to spend over $1.1 million plus benefits and pensions to stop 1 homicide, which is absurd. The lower estimate of spending is only $664,000. Meanwhile they ignore the other finding of the working paper which says that adding more cops just leads to a bunch of bullshit arrests of minorities on low-level offenses.
Also it makes the mistake of assuming correlation = causation and ignores that murder rates have gone down as cities became more prosperous. It's a baaaaad study that people only trot out because it fits their narrative.
This passage
> the results imply that larger police forces are unlikely to be an important driver of lengthy prison sentences or mass incarceration, for both Black and white civilians
Should really disqualify the paper from ever being taken seriously. The authors even recognize that they didn't really find anything statistically significant, but second-hand reporting makes the data seem much more solid than it actually is:
> While we find that investments in law enforcement save Black lives, the number of averted homicides (1 per 10-17 officers hired) is modest and might even be zero in cities with large Black populations.
noquarter53 t1_j2fgrv5 wrote
$1.1 M doesn't sound like that much to prevent a homicide, to me.
Both morally and economically, that feels like a worthwhile investment.
Gumburcules t1_j2fotin wrote
Unless you're hiring cops as temps that $1.1MM would be per year, for 20+ years, then like 60% of that forever.
Phizle t1_j2fj6zh wrote
It sets a pretty low bar for other solutions to be more efficient
noquarter53 t1_j2fjm56 wrote
What other solutions? Comprehensive economic and sociol transformation?
If there were an easy, efficient answer to this problem, it would have been implemented by now.
We should be ok with all-of-above strategies and be prepared to stop doing things that have low evidence of efficacy (including shrinking police budgets if it's proven that they aren't helpful).
KillLaKillmonger t1_j2fmxeu wrote
Police do not stop crimes nor is their such a thing as a trustworthy police force in America. It never has been especially for 40%+ of the population of DC.
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