Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

mart_nargy t1_j2awvew wrote

Reply to comment by Brickleberried in ABC News: "Washington, DC, records back-to-back years with 200 murders for 1st time in nearly 20 years" by Swampoodle1984

The good policing you envision isn’t going to prevent murders. At best it’ll make it more likely the murderers are arrested.

6

kellyzdude t1_j2b26ui wrote

As with any complex problem, it requires a multifaceted solution. Improving policing overall to deal with the crimes that do happen (and providing a minimal deterrence), but also encouraging social improvements in an effort to prevent the crimes from occurring in the first place.

We need both, thinking that either one in isolation will solve the crime problem is delusional.

6

Barnst t1_j2d74r2 wrote

> At best it’ll make it more likely the murderers are arrested.

Making it more likely that murders are arrested is one of the best ways to prevent murders. Certainty of being caught has consistently been found to be one of the most powerful deterrents to crime.

3

mart_nargy t1_j2dg27y wrote

For the serial killers, yes. But that won’t work for the random kid who got pissed off and shot someone. And even the best police can’t make evidence or a witness appear out of thin air (well, they can, but that’s a whole other depressing story). So I’m skeptical that more police will actually lead to more arrests, which is why i said at best. I happen to think that reducing the number of guns in hands is a better way to reduce the number of murders.

1

Barnst t1_j2dsizs wrote

You have it backwards—serial killers aren’t deterred by good policing because they are motivated by a psychological need to kill. The random kid who gets pissed off is exactly who is more likely to be deterred by the knowledge they will likely just get arrested.

There are confounding variables in terms of how likely they are to be charged and how severe the sentencing is, but you really quickly hit diminishing returns there. Otherwise, the deterrence effect of the certainty of getting caught is one of the most consistent findings in research on crime reduction.

And good policing does result in more evidence. One of the factors that makes it hard to catch killers is distrust between the police and the community, which means people are less likely to come forward to help the investigation. Again, there is some really solid data demonstrating this over time. Heck, there is even some research showing that better policing directly reduces murders—one reason that beefs get so bad is distrust in the formal system to deliver justice, so people take matters into their own hands.

The whole point is that it isn’t simply “more” cops, but better cops. Adding more cops when the cops are shit doesn’t help and can hurt.

And, sure, I agree that reducing the number of guns would be great too, but sadly I suspect we have far more policy control over the cops. And how do you expect to remove illegal guns from hands without more and better policing?

3