4 ms·

This is a convenient self-justifying fantasy. You're straight up saying that police could fail to do anything about 97% of crimes and it would still be worth it

by xtian 6y ago

This is a convenient self-justifying fantasy. You're straight up saying that police could fail to do anything about 97% of crimes and it would still be worth it for cities to dump 30-50% of their yearly budgets into them because "think of how bad it might be otherwise!" Be honest: do you apply such lax standards of effectiveness to any other area of your life? Would you pay 30% of your salary to go to a hospital that historically only cured 3% of patients? If so I've got some miracle leeches you might be interested in next time you're feeling ill. It's insane to me that people would rather dump hundreds of millions of dollars into a pointless effort to try to terrorize communities into law-abidance rather than invest that money into addressing some of the material desperation and crises in mental health which would actually make our communities nicer to live in for everyone.

mlyle 6y ago
> This is a convenient self-justifying fantasy. Nah. This is completely reasonable. We tend to have punishments that are large multiples of the benefits of committing the crime, because people know they will not likely be caught. So, you face the situation of doing something that you 90% know you'll get away with, but the remaining 10% is really, really inconvenient. And if you keep rolling the dice, you'll get caught eventually. (And in a perfect world, would be rehabilitated). > Would you pay 30% of your salary to go to a hospital that historically only cured 3% of patients NNT's tend to be pretty high for most medical interventions. e.g. statins. No mortality benefit, you need to treat 217 to prevent one nonfatal heart attack, and you need to treat 313 people to prevent one nonfatal stroke-- so about 0.5% see a benefit. We pay a small percentage of our income to what becomes city budgets, so I think you're engaging in hyperbole to compare this small percentage of our salary that goes to policing to spending 30% of our salary. I am paying a bunch of money for home insurance and it only rarely helps anyone...
- xtian 6y ago
  > We tend to have punishments that are large multiples of the benefits of committing the crime This is another fantasy. It's only true for certain types of people. Are the punishments for crimes committed by police officers scaled based on the likelihood of punishment? > NNT's tend to be pretty high for most medical interventions. e.g. statins. I would not pay 30% of my salary for statins. > We pay a small percentage of our income to what becomes city budgets All of the money that cities use to purchase police service comes from taxes. The question is not what percentage of an individual's income goes to police, but whether, from the perspective of the city, the overall allocation is an effective use of public funds.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    > Are the punishments for crimes committed by police officers scaled based on the likelihood of punishment? No, but they should be. > I would not pay 30% of my salary for statins. Do you pay 30% of your salary for policing? > The question is not what percentage of an individual's income goes to police, but whether, from the perspective of the city, the overall allocation is an effective use of public funds. That's an.. ahem.. interesting way to look at it. So if the city wastes twice as much money elsewhere, policing becomes a better deal? Or if the city gets 30 pennies, and uses 33% of it to stop a fraction of crime, that's a bad deal? It might be better to look at the services that residents receive in exchange for the amount they pay in taxes, instead of using some ridiculous metric based on fraction of one political entity's tax income. Otherwise we come up with ridiculous silly comparisons. The sheriff is a tiny proportion of my county's expenditures, and police are a big proportion of my city's expenditures... by your metric, the sheriff is more cost effective, despite costing nearly the exact same amount per capita for the people they're first responders for. (Because the county gets a much bigger share of tax income and spends a bunch on other services that my city doesn't have to pay for). Or if we're going with the health analogy-- we spend the overwhelming majority of our public health "income" on things with very high NNTs.
    - xtian 6y ago
      > That's an.. ahem.. interesting way to look at it. So if the city wastes twice as much money elsewhere, policing becomes a better deal? "Effective" to me means "achieves desired outcome". You seem to be using a different definition. If a city represents the interests of its residents and the residents share an interest in material safety, then the question becomes: which strategies provide the residents as a whole with the most safety for the least expenditure? And which strategies are the most in harmony with the resident's other interests (e.g., equality, human dignity)?
      - mlyle 6y ago
        I really want to talk about the percentage thing. For a given outcome: it's the same deal whether the city spends 33% on policing and it's 100x dollars, or if it spends 33% on policing and it's 1x dollars? Surely the proportion of residents' money spent on policing is what matters. > "Effective" to me means "achieves desired outcome". You seem to be using a different definition. Basically nothing achieves desired outcome. Case clearance rates are hardly a figure of merit for policing: I think it's likely that you believe as such, too. Or do you think the system would be better if it threw more people in jail? Argue in good faith. There's plenty of an argument for different police policy without going through ridiculous gymnastics ("percentage of income", arguing low case clearance rates makes policing ineffective, etc). Otherwise, you end up losing the people who might mostly agree with you-- maybe on purpose, are you just trolling?
anthuswilliams 6y ago
The parent is not "straight up saying" anything like what you claim they are.
- xtian 6y ago
  They are saying that in evaluating police effectiveness it's important to not only consider the empirical data of case clearance rates but also to imagine how many people might have committed crimes but were deterred. Until experiments are made to measure the effectiveness of different strategies for affecting crime rates, each person will imagine a different answer to this question based on their beliefs about human nature and society.
throwaway2037 6y ago
"30-50% of their yearly budgets" -- I tried to find some sources for that figure. Regarding what United States cities spend on police, Mother Jones has some information here: https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/08/the-blue-budget-what-major-cities-spend-on-police/ https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/08/the-blue-b... Honestly, the numbers are surprising to me. Example: Normally, New York City is quoted as having the largest police force in the United States. However, NYC only spends 8% of its city budget on police. I lived in Manhattan for a few years, and it was normal to see police on foot/bike/car patrols even in wealthy, relatively crime-free neighborhoods. Also: In the Mother Jones article pie charts, Oakland spends 44% of its city budget on police. But in the historical graphs below, they spend about 8%. There must be a subtle difference in what they are measuring, but it is unclear to me.
- xtian 6y ago
  I'm sure there's a better source, but this site has a list of police budget figures for the 300 largest US cities with links to the budget reports: https://costofpolice.org https://costofpolice.org According to that list police budgets make up an average of 30% of overall spending.
  - 23iofj 6y ago
    Note: sometimes you'll get two people giving different numbers for the same city. AFAICT this happens most often when pensions are broken out as a separate budget item. The fact that cities break them out separately is sensible -- pensions are legally quite different from other budget items. But pension obligations are a pretty significant component of the price of policing, so excluding them in these calculations doesn't make a lot of sense. 20%-30% is pretty typical. Almost all cities with lower numbers have enormous transportation budgets (e.g., NYC -- they do spend a ton on police, but they also have transportation budget that's comparable to many states).

by xtian 6y ago

mlyle 6y ago

> This is a convenient self-justifying fantasy. Nah. This is completely reasonable. We tend to have punishments that are large multiples of the benefits of committing the crime, because people know they will not likely be caught. So, you face the situation of doing something that you 90% know you'll get away with, but the remaining 10% is really, really inconvenient. And if you keep rolling the dice, you'll get caught eventually. (And in a perfect world, would be rehabilitated). > Would you pay 30% of your salary to go to a hospital that historically only cured 3% of patients NNT's tend to be pretty high for most medical interventions. e.g. statins. No mortality benefit, you need to treat 217 to prevent one nonfatal heart attack, and you need to treat 313 people to prevent one nonfatal stroke-- so about 0.5% see a benefit. We pay a small percentage of our income to what becomes city budgets, so I think you're engaging in hyperbole to compare this small percentage of our salary that goes to policing to spending 30% of our salary. I am paying a bunch of money for home insurance and it only rarely helps anyone...

xtian 6y ago
> We tend to have punishments that are large multiples of the benefits of committing the crime This is another fantasy. It's only true for certain types of people. Are the punishments for crimes committed by police officers scaled based on the likelihood of punishment? > NNT's tend to be pretty high for most medical interventions. e.g. statins. I would not pay 30% of my salary for statins. > We pay a small percentage of our income to what becomes city budgets All of the money that cities use to purchase police service comes from taxes. The question is not what percentage of an individual's income goes to police, but whether, from the perspective of the city, the overall allocation is an effective use of public funds.
- mlyle 6y ago
  > Are the punishments for crimes committed by police officers scaled based on the likelihood of punishment? No, but they should be. > I would not pay 30% of my salary for statins. Do you pay 30% of your salary for policing? > The question is not what percentage of an individual's income goes to police, but whether, from the perspective of the city, the overall allocation is an effective use of public funds. That's an.. ahem.. interesting way to look at it. So if the city wastes twice as much money elsewhere, policing becomes a better deal? Or if the city gets 30 pennies, and uses 33% of it to stop a fraction of crime, that's a bad deal? It might be better to look at the services that residents receive in exchange for the amount they pay in taxes, instead of using some ridiculous metric based on fraction of one political entity's tax income. Otherwise we come up with ridiculous silly comparisons. The sheriff is a tiny proportion of my county's expenditures, and police are a big proportion of my city's expenditures... by your metric, the sheriff is more cost effective, despite costing nearly the exact same amount per capita for the people they're first responders for. (Because the county gets a much bigger share of tax income and spends a bunch on other services that my city doesn't have to pay for). Or if we're going with the health analogy-- we spend the overwhelming majority of our public health "income" on things with very high NNTs.
  - xtian 6y ago
    > That's an.. ahem.. interesting way to look at it. So if the city wastes twice as much money elsewhere, policing becomes a better deal? "Effective" to me means "achieves desired outcome". You seem to be using a different definition. If a city represents the interests of its residents and the residents share an interest in material safety, then the question becomes: which strategies provide the residents as a whole with the most safety for the least expenditure? And which strategies are the most in harmony with the resident's other interests (e.g., equality, human dignity)?
    - mlyle 6y ago
      I really want to talk about the percentage thing. For a given outcome: it's the same deal whether the city spends 33% on policing and it's 100x dollars, or if it spends 33% on policing and it's 1x dollars? Surely the proportion of residents' money spent on policing is what matters. > "Effective" to me means "achieves desired outcome". You seem to be using a different definition. Basically nothing achieves desired outcome. Case clearance rates are hardly a figure of merit for policing: I think it's likely that you believe as such, too. Or do you think the system would be better if it threw more people in jail? Argue in good faith. There's plenty of an argument for different police policy without going through ridiculous gymnastics ("percentage of income", arguing low case clearance rates makes policing ineffective, etc). Otherwise, you end up losing the people who might mostly agree with you-- maybe on purpose, are you just trolling?

anthuswilliams 6y ago

The parent is not "straight up saying" anything like what you claim they are.

xtian 6y ago
They are saying that in evaluating police effectiveness it's important to not only consider the empirical data of case clearance rates but also to imagine how many people might have committed crimes but were deterred. Until experiments are made to measure the effectiveness of different strategies for affecting crime rates, each person will imagine a different answer to this question based on their beliefs about human nature and society.

throwaway2037 6y ago

"30-50% of their yearly budgets" -- I tried to find some sources for that figure. Regarding what United States cities spend on police, Mother Jones has some information here: https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/08/the-blue-budget-what-major-cities-spend-on-police/ https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/08/the-blue-b... Honestly, the numbers are surprising to me. Example: Normally, New York City is quoted as having the largest police force in the United States. However, NYC only spends 8% of its city budget on police. I lived in Manhattan for a few years, and it was normal to see police on foot/bike/car patrols even in wealthy, relatively crime-free neighborhoods. Also: In the Mother Jones article pie charts, Oakland spends 44% of its city budget on police. But in the historical graphs below, they spend about 8%. There must be a subtle difference in what they are measuring, but it is unclear to me.

xtian 6y ago
I'm sure there's a better source, but this site has a list of police budget figures for the 300 largest US cities with links to the budget reports: https://costofpolice.org https://costofpolice.org According to that list police budgets make up an average of 30% of overall spending.
- 23iofj 6y ago
  Note: sometimes you'll get two people giving different numbers for the same city. AFAICT this happens most often when pensions are broken out as a separate budget item. The fact that cities break them out separately is sensible -- pensions are legally quite different from other budget items. But pension obligations are a pretty significant component of the price of policing, so excluding them in these calculations doesn't make a lot of sense. 20%-30% is pretty typical. Almost all cities with lower numbers have enormous transportation budgets (e.g., NYC -- they do spend a ton on police, but they also have transportation budget that's comparable to many states).