[underbrush]

The cost of handling an order of magnitude more cases is significantly expanding the service. Everyone wants excellent public police, health care or education when it affects themselves. But going from average to good to excellent public services take more and more effort. Few countries today are willing to have the long-term public commitment and taxes to make that a reality.

[poszlem]

The issue in the UK is that the Police suffers from scope creep. The UK police force has been criticized for expanding its scope to include enforcing anti-hate crime laws and investigating "non-crime hate incidents." (hard to believe that the country that gave us Orwell came up with that phrase). This has diverted resources from more important tasks and led to the allocation of time and money towards activities such as painting their cars in rainbows and raising pride flags in public ceremonies.

Whatever you think of those side-activities, I'm sure fewer people would have any problem with them if they were confident that their possessions would be recovered if stolen (and more important crimes prosecuted).

[Normille]

  >The issue in the UK is that the Police suffers from scope creep. The UK police force has been criticized for expanding its scope to include enforcing anti-hate crime laws and investigating "non-crime hate incidents."...

This ^^ People get frustrated with the fact that they report a robbery or a break-in and the police take no action. But then they read about court cases involving 'hate crimes' which consisted of nothing more than someone being called a name they found offensive, or a dog being taught to do a nazi salute.

Obviously these cases are rare [that's why they make headlines], But the fact they happen at all doesn't do the police's reputation any favours, when there are 'actual' crimes being effectively ignored through claimed lack of resources.

[nibbleshifter]

None of the things you are complaining about have much of an operational impact on the British police.

You know what does?

The wholesale destruction of the NHS and ambulance services leading to the police being the first response to mental health issues.

Police are the wrong agency to deal with this, but currently in the UK, the police are pretty much always the first (often only) to deal with MH issues and get people into care/section them etc.

[DanBC]

> but currently in the UK, the police are pretty much always the first (often only) to deal with MH issues and get people into care/section them etc.

I can't talk about Scotland, Wales, or NI. But here's the data for England:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/sta...

There were 34,000 detentions under the act. Of these, only 4,150 were detentions following a Section 135 / 136 place of safety order (the bit of the Mental Health Act that the police can use).

The CQC also have their "Monitoring use of the Mental Health Act" report here: https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/monitoring-mental-health...

This strengthens the point you're making. EG https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/monitoring-mental-health... and https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/monitoring-mental-health... both talking about the poor care recieved by patients as a result of the defunding of the NHS and social care systems.

[underbrush]

There is no way to recover stolen possessions with a high degree of confidence as there are countless of those types of incidents all the time every day. Most police forces already have less resources than they could use for the more serious cases. Reliably handling lesser serious cases that are even more plentiful would be a large increase in activities and even larger increase in effort. And since a large part of the cost of public services are salaries it would mean a noticeable tax increase. Probably for a long time. Other than that what you are asking isn't really possible.

[throwaway858]

It could be done if the thief, after having been found guilty, is then forced to pay a fine equal to the cost of the investigation and court costs.

Yes, this could end up being a fine of $10,000 for stealing a $150 phone, but there is an argument to be made that it is justified (and just).

What are the arguments against?

[poszlem]

One would be that people who steal $150 phones don't have $10,000 to pay for fines.

[aborsy]

Get them work for public for 10k (few months by EU standards).

[meindnoch]

Somehow the priorities seem to be misplaced. On the London public transport, you're reminded every 3 minutes that you should report "unusual" behaviour to the police, including unwanted staring ("Call 61016 - See it, say it, sorted."), yet they're unable/unwilling to track down a stolen item worth ~£1200 even with accurate GPS coordinates available.