Briefly-- this post reminded me of an important fact about the debate over crime. Discussions of crime and crime prevention tend to be deeply political and often quite harsh, with differing camps making various accusations of each other. Liberals' concern for rights of the accused is often represented by conservatives as a failure to be tough on crime. Conservatives' tendency to push for harsh punishment and aggressive enforcement is often represented by liberals as a slouch towards totalitarianism.
But the actual small-scale policy prescriptions that work best to reduce crime tend to be rather apolitical, or so it seems to me. Much has been made of the aggression of the Giuliani-era police force in New York city, and the enormous reduction in crime during that period. (I find the NYPD's record on racial equity and the number of violent acts against black men during that time very disturbing.) But the people who know the best all seem to think that the gains weren't from racial profiling or more aggressive police actions, but from the increase in the number of police officers and the large increase in information-sharing within the department. Boots on the ground and intra-agency interoperability and communication seem to be the most important facet of reducing crime in our nation's cities. And those are both things that I find people of most political stripes are amenable to.
Though I think this has a lot of merit, I don't think it's quite that simple. Certainly, there's broad agreement on some policies that everyone should be for: put more cops on the street, get them out of their cars and talking to the community, and hold precinct commanders responsible for reducing crime in their districts. (I was recently shocked to be told that DC still hasn't implemented the computer-based analyses, modeled on the Compstat system pioneered in New York by Bill Bratton, that are now standard in most major cities. No wonder crime is still so high).
But the fact is, the more cops you put on the street, the more interactions they will have with citizens. And in a big city, where many of those citizens will be strangers, this means more potential for things to go dramatically wrong.
Now, you can mitigate this by forcing beat cops to stay on their beat until they really know the place, so they spend less time hassling "good kids". And certainly, the quasi-military tactics that have become popular all over the country (with voters as well as police departments) are often counterproductive bits of political theater. But the fact remains that if you put more police on the street, you are probably going to end up with more complaints--not least because criminals don't enjoy being hassled any more than anyone else.
Twenty years ago, my then 20 year old son came stomping into the house one evening and announced: "You can't even get into trouble in this town. Every time you turn around, there's another cop."
I had the opportunity to share his comment with the chief of police several weeks later. His reaction: "Wow, do I like to hear that." was accompanied by a huge grin.
Granted, I am not talking about NYC or DC, but the approach works.
Megan --
The saying goes, "You can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs."
The obvious truth - eloquently pointed out by Steven Levitt - is that more enforcement means less crime. And the best way to improve the former is by increasing the number of agents of enforcement (i.e. police officers).
There are two problems with that approach, which is why both political parties are loath to touch it: 1. it costs money (duh) 2. you need to hire those cops from somewhere.
The second problem is an important one, because the increase in number of cops comes at the expense of lower hiring standards unless you make the job more attractive to potential recruits, which costs yet more money.
Washington's problem is not so much police presence but the justice system as a whole. It doesn't do any good to arrest people if you don't send them to jail. The vast majority of violent crimes are committed by a small percentage of hardcore criminals. The challenge is to lock as many of those criminals up for the longest time possible. The nationwide drop in crime coincided with a huge increase in the prison population. In Washington juries and judges are notoriously lienent and jury nullification is common. You could hire a million cops and not overcome that problem.
Our esteemed blog hostess opines: "Certainly, there's broad agreement on some policies that everyone should be for: put more cops on the street"
Broad agreement among the Repiglican far right, perhaps. I for one don't want Bushpigs running around on power trips anywhere near my community, but to each his own.
Broad agreement among the Repiglican far right, perhaps. I for one don't want Bushpigs running around on power trips anywhere near my community, but to each his own.
How is every cop a "Bushpig"? That doesn't even make sense.
Freddie asks and asserts: "How is every cop a "Bushpig"? That doesn't even make sense."
Possibly not a Bushpig per se, but many pigs have the same reactionary, Manichean mindset. However they vote, they embody everything that has gone wrong in our country under the Repiglicans.
No no, I think the Manichean were the good guy aliens in the Fifth Element, not the pig-like bad guy aliens.
Don't you get embarrassed when you write Repiglicans instead of the real word? You're re-branding the party using lingual cues instead argument or persuasion. Facts and rational discourse are enough to basically crucify Republicans of late, without the need for these psychological "low blows." I mean, right?
Uh, isn't dividing the world into Bushpigs and non-Bushpigs a Manichean attitude?
Freddie, I'm not sure this is a debate you will find rewarding.
In this case, it might even be a Boyikeanean attitude!
You're probably right Rob.
Rob Lyman says: "Freddie, I'm not sure this is a debate you will find rewarding."
Megan really doesn't have a clue about what's going on in her comments section, does she?
The vast majority of violent crimes are committed by a small percentage of hardcore criminals. The challenge is to lock as many of those criminals up for the longest time possible.
If only there were some way to prevent criminals from ever committing another crime without having to lock them up forever ...
MPD does have a compstat system. I built it back in 2005. Granted it was a decade later than most cities had these systems, but it's up and running now.
MPD does have a compstat system. I built it back in 2005. Granted it was a decade later than most cities had these systems, but it's up and running now.
MLaJ, I think that Megan, like everyone else here, is more than aware of what's "going on" in the comments section, as you so passively put it, they just don't see the need to engage you. They figure you will burn yourself out. Hope that clarifies things for you.
(One could argue that people like you should be banned, and many would take that approach, but I guess Megan prefers a hands off approach, and that's reasonable too.)
Lurker, keep in mind there are at least two versions of MLaJ here, Jim Keane (formerly known as MLaJ and probably the original) and MLaJ (probably an impostor).
Although I am not a fan of overly insulting comments, I really, really, can't stand spoofing someone else's handle.
Before Giuliani was mayor he was U.S. Attorney. In that role he noticed two things. First, he understood that there was a powerful desire in "communities of color," for public safety. Many low-income neighborhoods composed overwhelmingly of African-American and Latino residents had been vocally and visibly demanding more effective policing throughout the City during the Dinkins and Koch administrations. Second, he knew that the criminal justice system as it operated in NY couldn't or wouldn't provide it - and he knew the how and why of that.
Giuliani appreciated that "solving" crime was conceptually a simple matter of changing the mix of incentives and disincentives for its commission. That meant increasing the likelihood criminals got caught, and the likelihood they'd suffer shame, jail, for financial loss.
The hard part was getting the law enforcement bureaucracy to participate. That's where Comstat came in. It was far less a tool for discovering where the crime was than an accountability club for precinct, boro, and division police leaders. Comstat sessions led to resignations and they were infamously brutal. They also opened up the slots for promotion and communicated what qualities would earn advancement.
The judiciary oftered less resistance. The NYS legislature put sufficiently tough laws on the books, limited judicial sentencing discretion, and built lots of prisons upstate.
There are variations on this pattern that lead to marked increases in public safety except for one element: the recognition of that there is a vast design for safety in urban neighborhoods and the decision to make the law enforcement bureaucracy deliver it; that is to say: the ability and willingness to mobilize the political toward a goal that meets with tremendous inertia.
Right from the start -- by which I mean late 19th century Europe -- it was understood that governance, not executive power, was the key to reducing crime. Governance means one thing: education. The leading education reformer in Britain during this period was a bureaucrat named James Kay Shuttleworth. He more or less invented popular education in England, and he did so explicitly in an effort to reduce crime. His profoundly successful idea was that state schooling, especially in literature and the classics and the discipline it takes to read them, would give the masses the kind of moral discipline they needed in order to avoid becoming delinquents. The idea is still correct. But in the United States the debate centers on police (executive power) not governance (proper state education), and hence we have ridiculous crime rates. The link between education and crime is not anywhere in empirical dispute. Almost all convicts are functionally illiterate. The best solution (not a panacea, but 1000 times better than the proposed alternatives in the USA) is education. This is totally obvious to all experts in the field and has been for more than a century.
Greg,
I couldn't agree with you more. Well said. I would add that one of the reasons we don't have better public education in the United States is that political correctness does not allow to discuss the enormous gulf between whites and blacks in their attitudes towards education.
The last thing I would want to see are more cops on the streets. Have you noticed that usually two or three cop cars show up even for quotidian events since we already have way too many cops? I call them public harassment officials.