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by rahimnathwani 833 days ago 

  Your perception of your own personal safety is not an objective measure of crime
FTFY

Reported crime is not an objective measure of crime and should not form the basis of a policing strategy.

When police cease to act on reports of crime, people have no incentive to report crime (except for major property crime which might be covered by insurance, and things like murder).

This is why we can't trust the crime stats where I live (San Francisco).
1 comments
bhpm 833 days ago
Your response is logically inconsistent.

>Reported crime [...] should not form the basis of a policing strategy.

and:

>When police cease to act on reports of crime, people have no incentive to report crime.

Logically, then, reported crime should form the basis of a policing strategy, since it creates an incentive to report crime.

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rahimnathwani 833 days ago
No. You're ignoring the time dimension.

Past policing strategy means that current crime stats are unreliable. These current crime stats should therefore not form the basis of a future policing strategy.

If we're optimizing for getting results today, policing strategy should not rely on the flawed crime stats we have today.

If we're optimizing for the long term, then sure rely on crime stats, but first make it easy to report crime.

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bhpm 833 days ago
If it's so difficult to report crimes, wouldn't that mean that the crimes that are reported represent the most egregious, since the people who reported them overcame the difficulty in reporting to report the crimes? And, therefore, current policing strategy should -- indeed -- focus on the reported crimes while making it easier to report them?
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rahimnathwani 833 days ago
You have it backwards. The current policing strategy is the cause of the reported crimes mix.

People will report crimes that:

- they think the police will do something about, and/or

- they need to report in order to file an insurance claim

If your car window gets smashed and you're not going to report it to your insurer lest it raises your premium next year, and if you know the police aren't going to investigate, why would you report it?

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