[dsfyu404ed]

>If Middletown’s police department collected only about 1 percent of its revenue from fees and fines, our model predicts it would solve 53 percent of its violent crimes and 32 percent of its property crimes. But if Middletown’s police department instead collected 3 percent of its revenue from fees and fines, our model predicts that clearance rates would fall to 41 percent for violent crimes and 16 percent for property crimes. That’s a stark drop of 12 and 16 percentage points, respectively.

I want to see this broken down in terms of business days between crime and someone being charged.

I have a suspicion that the correlation is being diluted by all the open and shut "guy A punches guy B and gets charged with assault and battery because everyone in the bar saw him do it" cases that don't require any investigating (other than possibly collecting statements) types of violent crime that will get "solved" regardless of how much time the police spend collecting fines.

[snarf21]

I think this misses the point. Issues like this are multi-faceted. Would people rather pay higher taxes or have the police get the money from speeders and parking violators? People who live in cities must have parking rules or you are walking 4 blocks from your car to house each night.

My brother-in-law is a state police. When he was on patrol, they would get lots of calls because someone mowed across someone else's property line. Or someone stole someone else's pet rabbit. Once a mom called in and claimed that her teenage son was assaulting her. When they arrived, it turned out he just wasn't listening to her and doing chores and homework so she wanted to 'scare him straight' and have the police tell him he had to. Other ones are because some 15 year old texted nudes or posted on Instagram that they were going to 'kill' a teacher that gave them a bad grade.

He is now a detective and it is like you say above. The easy ones get solved right away after some minor investigation but there are no resources to spend weeks investigating murders with no witnesses or likely suspects.

In the end, part of it comes down to what do you want the police function to be.

[mgkimsal]

> Once a mom called in and claimed that her teenage son was assaulting her. When they arrived, it turned out he just wasn't listening to her and doing chores and homework so she wanted to 'scare him straight' and have the police tell him he had to

Wow.... I would like to see that parent charged with wasting police time.

[vkou]

> Would people rather pay higher taxes or have the police get the money from speeders and parking violators? People who live in cities must have parking rules or you are walking 4 blocks from your car to house each night.

Given that everyone[1] speeds, I think you're comparing half dozen of one to six of the other.

[1] Okay, something like 95% of the vehicles on the road, and everyone hates the other 5%.

[phil248]

It's almost like we need a separate force to deal with many of the issues you're describing. It could probably lessen the load of traditional police forces and at a reduced cost.

Plus, there may be some social benefits to having a civic response force that does not wander the streets with loaded firearms.

[justaguyhere]

someone stole someone else's pet rabbit. scare him straight

Aren't these better cases for a fine than ticketing someone for going 5mph over limit?

[rightbyte]

How about this:

Places where the police collect more fines has higher criminality and the police has less resources per crime to solve crimes?

I don't believe this nonsense article at all. They are overfitting their data. It's more or less fraud. They are mixing units in the regression. Most of the control variables are correlated etc.

They even tried to link fracking to this somehow, but didn't find significance.

http://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/upload_documents/...

"Our results suggest that institutional changes—such as decreasing municipal government reliance on fines and fees for revenue—are important for changing police behavior and improving the provision of public safety."

What they are acctually discovering is that crime clearance rate is mostly dependent on crime rate.

[merpnderp]

But those types of crimes would need to occur at significantly different rates between different fine and fee jurisdictions.