You can't just abdicate the monopoly on violence because you feel you've done enough policing this year, any more than you can stop pumping water when you feel

You can't just abdicate the monopoly on violence because you feel you've done enough policing this year, any more than you can stop pumping water when you feel like people have used enough, or stop processing sewage and collecting trash when you feel like people have produced enough waste. That doesn't preclude working on root causes of crime or water conservation or reducing waste. But government has to deal with the population-level behavior that it actually has - all of it, not the amount it wishes it had - or we are fundamentally not living in civilization anymore. Water stops coming out of the taps, trash piles up in the streets, and people do crimes with impunity. The Northern European societies people lionize in these types of discussions are certainly not like that.