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A rather terrifying statistic I remember from investigating crime in Chicago: 50% of homicides are brought to justice in Chicago, but the remaining half are no
by ipnon 6y ago
A rather terrifying statistic I remember from investigating crime in Chicago:
50% of homicides are brought to justice in Chicago, but the remaining half are not normally distributed in terms of crimes per criminal. ~50 people are responsible for half of the unsolved homicides in Chicago.
I am not going to be able to provide a direct reference for this claim. My point is that the rate of severe crimes can be efficiently diminished by targeting professional criminals and the networks that enable them. Policing minor crimes is counterproductive because the harmful side effects of policing (racial and social injustice, legal costs, adversity between police and citizens) are greater than the benefit to the community of removing misdemeanors like vandalism and drug use. You might say that broken windows policing is not Pareto efficient.
- Gibbon1 6y agoA thought of mine is the police use prosecution of minor crimes and harassment of identifiable groups as a proxy for harder to enforce and more serious crimes. I think it's a fallacy with very negative outcomes.
- foolmeonce 6y agoI think it is entirely different to handle reports of misdemeanors by the public with integrity and to attempt to catch misdemeanors in progress with active surveillance. The first can get you trust needed to identify your major criminals, the second creates an alliance of presumed criminals that shares little with the police.
- j88439h84 6y ago> ~50 people are responsible for half of the unsolved homicides in Chicago. What does this mean? If we know who did them, how are they unsolved?