7 ms·

The United States Is Still Under-Policed and Over-Imprisoned

wahnfrieden 4y ago
nonsense article that feigns data-based objectivity and curiosity but simply takes for granted that more violent crime is solved by having more pigs on payrolls
skciva 4y ago
Bit of a laughable conclusion from the data if you ask me. The comments discussing it under the actual article do a good job debunking what this author was trying to suggest.
usednet 4y ago
What the article does not consider is US police expenditure. In many major cities policing is ~30% of general fund expenditure. If US police expenditure was a country’s military budget, it would astonishingly rank 3rd worldwide. Hiring more police is not the simple solution, there needs to be a fundamental cultural shift among American police away from militarization.
- rednerrus 4y ago
  We've militarized the police because of the long term damage done during riots. The economic impact of riots in the 60s and 70s can not be overstated and is often overlooked when we have these discussions: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40056402#metadata_info_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/40056402#metadata_info_tab_cont....
  - banannaise 4y ago
    You don't stop riots by shooting at them. You stop riots by preventing or resolving the economic and social conditions that lead to them; that is, by improving the quality of life of those who have the lowest quality of life. Unfortunately, shooting at them is easier to both conceptualize and implement, so governments tend to simply do that anyway.
    - azekai 4y ago
      That is... really complicated. 'Just improve their standard of living bro' isn't a real solution. It's like saying we can prevent murder by systemically renouncing violence and becoming a more peaceful society. This is obviously true, but the path forward is not obvious.
      - banannaise 4y ago
        Right. The actual solution is complicated, so we default to easy "solutions" that don't work. That's the exact point I just made.
  - mcphage 4y ago
    > We've militarized the police because of the long term damage done during riots. Interesting—I've always assumed that we militarized the police because the military wanted to recoup some of the costs from replacing their hardware.
- LordKano 4y ago
  Considering how many people go into law enforcement because they want to play with military toys without the burdens of military service, it's going to be hard to pull them away from that.
  - nopenopenopeno 4y ago
    Yeah, this seems like the most urgent cultural shift. The Right insists policing is an extremely risky job, but statistics suggest otherwise. That said, policing would be much more risky if we had police who actually took the risks they signed up for. Instead, American police by and large do not take seriously their duty to serve the people. Look no further than the despicable failures on the scene at Uvalde Elementary.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      > statistics suggest otherwise No, they don't. They clearly show it is a dangerous profession. I'm sure you're going to say something like "Being a pizza delivery driver is more dangerous than being a cop", because that is exactly how this conversation always goes, because it is a meme at this point that you're just repeating instead of thinking, but it doesn't make any sense, and would probably work better on reddit than on HN. Do you wear a seatbelt in a car? I'll assume so - why would you do that? Driving in a car without a seatbelt clearly isn't dangerous, because motorcyclists have a much higher rate of injuries while driving. See, that is a really stupid thing I just said. And it is the same exact logic that you're using to say being an officer isn't a dangerous profession. > Look no further than the despicable failures on the scene at Uvalde Elementary. So you're judging millions of people on the actions of a few people? That sounds suspiciously like a pretty serious flaw in rational thinking that "The Right" commonly falls subject to.
  - cptcobalt 4y ago
    Yes, this, exactly. Two different people who bullied me in high school aggressively (for my sexuality and general nerdery) have gone on to be cops—they were the type to post pictures of themselves on Facebook shooting guns. I would run from them without hesitation if they ever pulled me over. They're not the right type to be cops. And I'm relatively confident that many, many cops are like them. It's chilling.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  > In many major cities policing is ~30% of general fund expenditure It is even more if you include the understated costs of underfunding retiree benefits such as defined benefit pensions and healthcare.
- pstuart 4y ago
  Absolutely! The War on Drugs is probably the biggest contributor to this problem -- it's beyond vexing that such a simple solution exists yet is rejected.
Test0129 4y ago
> Shifting to more police and less imprisonment could reduce crime and improve policing. More police and less imprisonment also has the advantage of being a feasible policy. Large majorities of blacks, hispanics and whites support hiring more police. “Tough on crime” can be interpreted as greater certainty of punishment and with greater certainty of punishment we can safely reduce punishment levels. This conclusion is questionable. While the data seems to suggest we have an astonishingly high imprisonment and recidivism rate I don't think the thinly veiled "abolish the police" argument, coupled with it's typical race-based arguments, will solve anything. We can really, truly, improve an unfortunate necessity of society by a few things in my estimation: 1. Regular psychological evaluation for police and yearly training on de-escalation coupled with firearms training. Additional scrutiny for people with previous experience in combat roles in the military. Lack of sufficient firearms qualification should prevent you from carrying a firearm under qualified immunity, additional PT should be done every 6 months and two failures removes you from the force. 2. Removal of most of qualified immunity. Your job was never "get home safe". 3. Defang the police union which by-and-large is how police get away with murder. Force police to carry malpractice insurance instead (value > 1MM). 4. Disincentivize crime hunting as a method of police keeping their job. For example, your next review at the precinct won't look so good unless you have N number of arrests. This can be done either by punishing police for over-policing, or changing laws that are designed to imprison people for trivialities (minor drug charges, child support, etc). 5. De-militarization of the police and a return back to the "old" times. Police should walk the beat and mingle with the people. As it stands now they drive around in veritable IFVs with more weaponry than is even close to reasonable for their day to day job. Right now they are closer to UN peacekeepers than civil servants. 6. Undoing Castle Rock v. Gonzales which allows police to not have any duty to defend. 7. Most importantly, seriously scrutinize the roles and motivations of DAs and their relationship with judges who are responsible for perpetuating the majority of non-violent crimes that put people in prison for decades. Of course none of this will ever happen because the true purpose of the police is compliance and control, not safety. If you don't believe me think really hard about how comfortable you are talking to the police, and then think about how comfortable you are talking to a firefighter. The police are simply the meat enforcers of The State and so any desire to change them is simply wishful thinking. Even the military is nicer to citizens in an occupied country than the police are to their own countrymen. It's frankly shocking.
mrozbarry 4y ago
Without reading the article or data, but wasn't there a huge push in the US to defund the police? Did that go anywhere?
- dghlsakjg 4y ago
  There were a few initiatives in a few large cities, but largely police budgets have not dropped, and in most cases have increased since 2020. It’s important to remember that in the US policing is incredibly fractured. Most cities in the US have at least 4 or so independent agencies that have jurisdiction (transit, county sheriff, city pd, state patrol), it’s entirely possible that there are more in many places. This makes it hard to know if police are funded or not
- kingofkyiv 4y ago
  Yes there was. It didnt't go far. Anywhere it did saw huge spikes in crime. Imagine that.
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    "Defund the police" is a widely misunderstood message. But I don't blame people for misunderstanding it. As much as I agree with the left, they suck at coming up with slogans. "Black Lives Matter" should have been "Black Lives Matter Too", but I digress... "Defund the police" was supposed to really mean two things: 1. Stop sending police to handle cases they are not trained to handle, such as drugged out people wigging out on the street. Police should only be sent if deadly force may be required to handle the solution. 2. Hold police accountable. The cop that show Brianna Taylor should be in prison for murder. The cops involved in the death of Freddie Gray should be in prison for manslaughter. The cop that shot Daniel Shaver should be in prison for murder. Instead, either the DA doesn't press charges, or the judge is just as corrupt as the police and sabotages the case. For example, the judge in the Daniel Shaver shooting did not allow the body cam footage to be shown to the jury, an act that is inexcusable.
- __derek__ 4y ago
  No, there wasn't. There were groups of activists pushing that message, and it was loudly broadcast by partisan media seeking to tie those activists to mainstream politicians. The cities where such activists were particularly loud elected mayors and municipal attorneys opposed by those activists (e.g., New York, Portland, Seattle). Police budgets remain intact.
petey_pillpress 4y ago
This is extremely uncritical at best and copaganda at worst. We also lag behind those comparison countries in hundreds of other metrics--food security, housing, segregation, relative public spending on healthcare, education, services, etc. What would make more of a difference for crime--expanding police budgets in cities that already outspend dozens of foreign militaries or investing those resources in systemic changes to provide people wellbeing and economic stability?
- rayiner 4y ago
  Crime isn’t caused by the lack of social services. Villages in Bangladesh have less crime than many parts of America. Indeed, America itself has higher crime than it did in the 1950s, even though most modern social programs didn’t exist back then.
  - adamsmith143 4y ago
    This is misleading, crime massively increased from 1960 to 1980 and has been steadily decreasing ever since.
    - kingofkyiv 4y ago
      It correlates with access to abortion interestingly. Of which blacks use it the most.
      - JamesBarney 4y ago
        I know this was made popular by freakonomics but it has since been disproven. Crime rates dropped in other countries that didn't have Roe v Wade and the data better fits the hypothesis that the drop in crime was caused by the banning of leaded gasoline.
        kingofkyiv 4y ago
        Interesting! Thanks for this comment and update.
kingofkyiv 4y ago
abeppu 4y ago
I think this makes a really poor argument for the under-policed part of their claim; on the first graph, the US is not an outlier in terms of police per 100k, only in our number of prisoners per 100k. We could have fewer prisoners without having more police. In addition to being more humane, this could save money, decrease inequality, etc. Relative to other rich countries, we have more homicides. But if you look at homicides/100k vs Gini index for all countries, we're right in the middle of the pack. Perhaps if we actually want less crime, we should try to create a more equal society. https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$ui$projector:true;&model$markers$bubble$encoding$y$data$concept=vc_ihr_psrc_p5&source=wdi&space@=country&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed:null&type=log;;&x$data$concept=gini&source=fasttrack&space@=country&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed:null&type:null;;&frame$value=2018;&trail$data$filter$markers$esp=2018&est=2018&ltu=2018&bra=2018&mex=2018&col=2018&uga=2018&ind=2018&usa=2018;;;;;;;;&chart-type=bubbles&url=v1 https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$ui$projector:true;&model$m...
jjk166 4y ago
The data cited by the article works against it. The US has a reasonable number of police per capita for a developed nation, falling between Canada and Australia which are culturally very similar (common law, english speaking, a few dense urban centers but also large rural areas, etc). The issue is that despite having an adequate number of police, they are not effective at suppressing violent crime. This is hardly surprising if you dig a little deeper. There has been a long trend throughout the US of reduce spending on dedicated public services -> shift remaining responsibility for those services to local police -> increase police budget to handle additional workload -> budget issues -> reduce spending on dedicated public services. The problems all those services were dealing with fester, leading to lower quality of life and worsening socioeconomic situations for residents, which in turn increases both demand for these services and crime rates. At the same time while the cops are doing inadequate jobs dealing with problems they are neither equipped nor trained for, they are pulling resources away from the job they are actually supposed to be doing. These penny pinching policies have ironically fiscally ruined many communities across the nation. Unfortunately many have dug themselves so deep that the damage is likely irreversible, especially when you consider demographic trends that are depleting these communities of their young, their wealthy, and their skilled citizens. Those communities that can be saved will likely need a complex cocktail of creative measures and external assistance. Any simple proposal like "just hire more cops" is as laughable as "let them eat cake."
hackeraccount 4y ago
I've always though the biggest problem with the criminal justice system in the United States is that it somehow manages a weird trick of being both too lax and too punitive. Punishment is very severe on the face of it. Long jail sentences; even the death penalty is possible in more then a few places. Even after you've served time a criminal record will affect you for the rest of your life. The effect of that though is a weird laxness. The harsher the penalty the greater the temptation to give people multiple chances. The greater the penalty the more effort you need to put in to making sure that the person you're putting away really committed the crime. All of this means it takes longer to actually convict anyone. All of which increases the temptation to let people out on bail while the wheels of justice are turning. The end result is that people commit multiple crimes with no consequences until they finally trip the line and the consequences are a metric ton of bricks falling right on their heads. And this is affecting people who almost by definition are not good at making long term plans on possible future rewards or problems - if they were they'd be tax payers. A better system would - in my opinion - be one that comes down very fast with relatively small consequences on criminal behavior. If I knew that people who shoplifted $20 worth of goods were almost certainly going to spend a week in jail - even if there would be no record of them doing that jail time anywhere - I honestly think that kind of petty crime would be greatly lessened. Frankly (and please don't ask me Kitty Dukakis type questions ) I think the general principle goes all the way through criminal conduct.

nonsense article that feigns data-based objectivity and curiosity but simply takes for granted that more violent crime is solved by having more pigs on payrolls

skciva 4y ago

Bit of a laughable conclusion from the data if you ask me. The comments discussing it under the actual article do a good job debunking what this author was trying to suggest.

usednet 4y ago

What the article does not consider is US police expenditure. In many major cities policing is ~30% of general fund expenditure. If US police expenditure was a country’s military budget, it would astonishingly rank 3rd worldwide. Hiring more police is not the simple solution, there needs to be a fundamental cultural shift among American police away from militarization.

rednerrus 4y ago
We've militarized the police because of the long term damage done during riots. The economic impact of riots in the 60s and 70s can not be overstated and is often overlooked when we have these discussions: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40056402#metadata_info_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/40056402#metadata_info_tab_cont....
- banannaise 4y ago
  You don't stop riots by shooting at them. You stop riots by preventing or resolving the economic and social conditions that lead to them; that is, by improving the quality of life of those who have the lowest quality of life. Unfortunately, shooting at them is easier to both conceptualize and implement, so governments tend to simply do that anyway.
  - azekai 4y ago
    That is... really complicated. 'Just improve their standard of living bro' isn't a real solution. It's like saying we can prevent murder by systemically renouncing violence and becoming a more peaceful society. This is obviously true, but the path forward is not obvious.
    - banannaise 4y ago
      Right. The actual solution is complicated, so we default to easy "solutions" that don't work. That's the exact point I just made.
- mcphage 4y ago
  > We've militarized the police because of the long term damage done during riots. Interesting—I've always assumed that we militarized the police because the military wanted to recoup some of the costs from replacing their hardware.
LordKano 4y ago
Considering how many people go into law enforcement because they want to play with military toys without the burdens of military service, it's going to be hard to pull them away from that.
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  Yeah, this seems like the most urgent cultural shift. The Right insists policing is an extremely risky job, but statistics suggest otherwise. That said, policing would be much more risky if we had police who actually took the risks they signed up for. Instead, American police by and large do not take seriously their duty to serve the people. Look no further than the despicable failures on the scene at Uvalde Elementary.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    > statistics suggest otherwise No, they don't. They clearly show it is a dangerous profession. I'm sure you're going to say something like "Being a pizza delivery driver is more dangerous than being a cop", because that is exactly how this conversation always goes, because it is a meme at this point that you're just repeating instead of thinking, but it doesn't make any sense, and would probably work better on reddit than on HN. Do you wear a seatbelt in a car? I'll assume so - why would you do that? Driving in a car without a seatbelt clearly isn't dangerous, because motorcyclists have a much higher rate of injuries while driving. See, that is a really stupid thing I just said. And it is the same exact logic that you're using to say being an officer isn't a dangerous profession. > Look no further than the despicable failures on the scene at Uvalde Elementary. So you're judging millions of people on the actions of a few people? That sounds suspiciously like a pretty serious flaw in rational thinking that "The Right" commonly falls subject to.
- cptcobalt 4y ago
  Yes, this, exactly. Two different people who bullied me in high school aggressively (for my sexuality and general nerdery) have gone on to be cops—they were the type to post pictures of themselves on Facebook shooting guns. I would run from them without hesitation if they ever pulled me over. They're not the right type to be cops. And I'm relatively confident that many, many cops are like them. It's chilling.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
> In many major cities policing is ~30% of general fund expenditure It is even more if you include the understated costs of underfunding retiree benefits such as defined benefit pensions and healthcare.
pstuart 4y ago
Absolutely! The War on Drugs is probably the biggest contributor to this problem -- it's beyond vexing that such a simple solution exists yet is rejected.

Test0129 4y ago

> Shifting to more police and less imprisonment could reduce crime and improve policing. More police and less imprisonment also has the advantage of being a feasible policy. Large majorities of blacks, hispanics and whites support hiring more police. “Tough on crime” can be interpreted as greater certainty of punishment and with greater certainty of punishment we can safely reduce punishment levels. This conclusion is questionable. While the data seems to suggest we have an astonishingly high imprisonment and recidivism rate I don't think the thinly veiled "abolish the police" argument, coupled with it's typical race-based arguments, will solve anything. We can really, truly, improve an unfortunate necessity of society by a few things in my estimation: 1. Regular psychological evaluation for police and yearly training on de-escalation coupled with firearms training. Additional scrutiny for people with previous experience in combat roles in the military. Lack of sufficient firearms qualification should prevent you from carrying a firearm under qualified immunity, additional PT should be done every 6 months and two failures removes you from the force. 2. Removal of most of qualified immunity. Your job was never "get home safe". 3. Defang the police union which by-and-large is how police get away with murder. Force police to carry malpractice insurance instead (value > 1MM). 4. Disincentivize crime hunting as a method of police keeping their job. For example, your next review at the precinct won't look so good unless you have N number of arrests. This can be done either by punishing police for over-policing, or changing laws that are designed to imprison people for trivialities (minor drug charges, child support, etc). 5. De-militarization of the police and a return back to the "old" times. Police should walk the beat and mingle with the people. As it stands now they drive around in veritable IFVs with more weaponry than is even close to reasonable for their day to day job. Right now they are closer to UN peacekeepers than civil servants. 6. Undoing Castle Rock v. Gonzales which allows police to not have any duty to defend. 7. Most importantly, seriously scrutinize the roles and motivations of DAs and their relationship with judges who are responsible for perpetuating the majority of non-violent crimes that put people in prison for decades. Of course none of this will ever happen because the true purpose of the police is compliance and control, not safety. If you don't believe me think really hard about how comfortable you are talking to the police, and then think about how comfortable you are talking to a firefighter. The police are simply the meat enforcers of The State and so any desire to change them is simply wishful thinking. Even the military is nicer to citizens in an occupied country than the police are to their own countrymen. It's frankly shocking.

mrozbarry 4y ago

Without reading the article or data, but wasn't there a huge push in the US to defund the police? Did that go anywhere?

dghlsakjg 4y ago
There were a few initiatives in a few large cities, but largely police budgets have not dropped, and in most cases have increased since 2020. It’s important to remember that in the US policing is incredibly fractured. Most cities in the US have at least 4 or so independent agencies that have jurisdiction (transit, county sheriff, city pd, state patrol), it’s entirely possible that there are more in many places. This makes it hard to know if police are funded or not
kingofkyiv 4y ago
Yes there was. It didnt't go far. Anywhere it did saw huge spikes in crime. Imagine that.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  "Defund the police" is a widely misunderstood message. But I don't blame people for misunderstanding it. As much as I agree with the left, they suck at coming up with slogans. "Black Lives Matter" should have been "Black Lives Matter Too", but I digress... "Defund the police" was supposed to really mean two things: 1. Stop sending police to handle cases they are not trained to handle, such as drugged out people wigging out on the street. Police should only be sent if deadly force may be required to handle the solution. 2. Hold police accountable. The cop that show Brianna Taylor should be in prison for murder. The cops involved in the death of Freddie Gray should be in prison for manslaughter. The cop that shot Daniel Shaver should be in prison for murder. Instead, either the DA doesn't press charges, or the judge is just as corrupt as the police and sabotages the case. For example, the judge in the Daniel Shaver shooting did not allow the body cam footage to be shown to the jury, an act that is inexcusable.
__derek__ 4y ago
No, there wasn't. There were groups of activists pushing that message, and it was loudly broadcast by partisan media seeking to tie those activists to mainstream politicians. The cities where such activists were particularly loud elected mayors and municipal attorneys opposed by those activists (e.g., New York, Portland, Seattle). Police budgets remain intact.

petey_pillpress 4y ago

This is extremely uncritical at best and copaganda at worst. We also lag behind those comparison countries in hundreds of other metrics--food security, housing, segregation, relative public spending on healthcare, education, services, etc. What would make more of a difference for crime--expanding police budgets in cities that already outspend dozens of foreign militaries or investing those resources in systemic changes to provide people wellbeing and economic stability?

rayiner 4y ago
Crime isn’t caused by the lack of social services. Villages in Bangladesh have less crime than many parts of America. Indeed, America itself has higher crime than it did in the 1950s, even though most modern social programs didn’t exist back then.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  This is misleading, crime massively increased from 1960 to 1980 and has been steadily decreasing ever since.
  - kingofkyiv 4y ago
    It correlates with access to abortion interestingly. Of which blacks use it the most.
    - JamesBarney 4y ago
      I know this was made popular by freakonomics but it has since been disproven. Crime rates dropped in other countries that didn't have Roe v Wade and the data better fits the hypothesis that the drop in crime was caused by the banning of leaded gasoline.
      - kingofkyiv 4y ago
        Interesting! Thanks for this comment and update.

kingofkyiv 4y ago

abeppu 4y ago

I think this makes a really poor argument for the under-policed part of their claim; on the first graph, the US is not an outlier in terms of police per 100k, only in our number of prisoners per 100k. We could have fewer prisoners without having more police. In addition to being more humane, this could save money, decrease inequality, etc. Relative to other rich countries, we have more homicides. But if you look at homicides/100k vs Gini index for all countries, we're right in the middle of the pack. Perhaps if we actually want less crime, we should try to create a more equal society. https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$ui$projector:true;&model$markers$bubble$encoding$y$data$concept=vc_ihr_psrc_p5&source=wdi&space@=country&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed:null&type=log;;&x$data$concept=gini&source=fasttrack&space@=country&=time;;&scale$domain:null&zoomed:null&type:null;;&frame$value=2018;&trail$data$filter$markers$esp=2018&est=2018&ltu=2018&bra=2018&mex=2018&col=2018&uga=2018&ind=2018&usa=2018;;;;;;;;&chart-type=bubbles&url=v1 https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$ui$projector:true;&model$m...

jjk166 4y ago

The data cited by the article works against it. The US has a reasonable number of police per capita for a developed nation, falling between Canada and Australia which are culturally very similar (common law, english speaking, a few dense urban centers but also large rural areas, etc). The issue is that despite having an adequate number of police, they are not effective at suppressing violent crime. This is hardly surprising if you dig a little deeper. There has been a long trend throughout the US of reduce spending on dedicated public services -> shift remaining responsibility for those services to local police -> increase police budget to handle additional workload -> budget issues -> reduce spending on dedicated public services. The problems all those services were dealing with fester, leading to lower quality of life and worsening socioeconomic situations for residents, which in turn increases both demand for these services and crime rates. At the same time while the cops are doing inadequate jobs dealing with problems they are neither equipped nor trained for, they are pulling resources away from the job they are actually supposed to be doing. These penny pinching policies have ironically fiscally ruined many communities across the nation. Unfortunately many have dug themselves so deep that the damage is likely irreversible, especially when you consider demographic trends that are depleting these communities of their young, their wealthy, and their skilled citizens. Those communities that can be saved will likely need a complex cocktail of creative measures and external assistance. Any simple proposal like "just hire more cops" is as laughable as "let them eat cake."

hackeraccount 4y ago

I've always though the biggest problem with the criminal justice system in the United States is that it somehow manages a weird trick of being both too lax and too punitive. Punishment is very severe on the face of it. Long jail sentences; even the death penalty is possible in more then a few places. Even after you've served time a criminal record will affect you for the rest of your life. The effect of that though is a weird laxness. The harsher the penalty the greater the temptation to give people multiple chances. The greater the penalty the more effort you need to put in to making sure that the person you're putting away really committed the crime. All of this means it takes longer to actually convict anyone. All of which increases the temptation to let people out on bail while the wheels of justice are turning. The end result is that people commit multiple crimes with no consequences until they finally trip the line and the consequences are a metric ton of bricks falling right on their heads. And this is affecting people who almost by definition are not good at making long term plans on possible future rewards or problems - if they were they'd be tax payers. A better system would - in my opinion - be one that comes down very fast with relatively small consequences on criminal behavior. If I knew that people who shoplifted $20 worth of goods were almost certainly going to spend a week in jail - even if there would be no record of them doing that jail time anywhere - I honestly think that kind of petty crime would be greatly lessened. Frankly (and please don't ask me Kitty Dukakis type questions ) I think the general principle goes all the way through criminal conduct.