What are the police for?

According to the Urban Institute, state and local governments spent $115 billion on police.

Broadly speaking, one might say that their purpose is to

1. prevent or deter crime; and
2. to solve crimes that have been committed.

How good are they at this?

The evidence I’ve seen suggests that the police are most effective at deterring crimes that take place in public places against property, and least effective at preventing crimes against people in private spaces (murder, assault, and sexual assault — most of which takes places between people who know each other).

Because so many violent crimes are committed in places where a police presence is not possible, it stands to reason that increasing the number of police to deter those crimes is not effective. Increasing the number of police to deter murder and sexual assault makes no sense.

But that’s only one part of the policing problem. What about solving crimes?

Vox did an article on this a couple of years ago. They report that nationwide, in 2017, the clearance rate (“the percentage of property and violent crimes that are resolved in an arrest or other means by police”) for murder was 61.2%. The Washington Post reported in 2018: “Out of 54,868 homicides in 55 cities over the past decade, 50 percent did not result in an arrest.”  That’s the clearance rate; the conviction rate, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics was 70% nationwide. A rough estimate of convictions, then, would be 43% nationwide (61.2% * 70%), and 35% (50% * 70%) in the 55 cities. That’s really not very good: statistically, most murderers are not convicted.

Murders are of course one of the highest-profile crimes, and attract an important part of police funding and resources – and yet the conviction rate is low. It is, of course, much worse for some crimes. Sexual assaults and rapes. The Washington Post reported that less than 1% of sexual assaults result in felony conviction.

I noted above that the police seem to be most effective at deterring crimes against property in public places. But what about crimes involving property that aren’t deterred?

Here the police track record is even worse. For motor vehicle theft, the clearance rate (arrest, basically) is 13.8%. For burglary, 13.9%. For arson, 22.4%.

This seems like an awfully ineffective system, and that’s not taking into account all of the serious problems that policing involves: racism, excessive rates of incarceration, attacks on civilians, and so forth.

It’s hard to know what things would be like in the absence of police. But what I think is pretty clear is that we can imagine ways in which the goals of policing would be achieved in better, cheaper, more effective ways. The police are far too often a cudgel, but cudgels are not good ways to create the conditions for the kind of harmony we need. So let’s be creative. Let’s think about ways in which we work to prevent the conditions for crime. Let’s think about providing opportunities for people. Let’s think about understanding the factors that contribute to violence, and figure out ways to deescalate.

It’s time to move away from a model of policing; it’s time to move to a model of participation.