I would be interested in an analysis of how refusals to prosecute are or are not affecting statistics. If you stop prosecuting a certain crime, does it appear like that crime is happening less on paper?
In the UK crime statistics are collected from a survey of people's experiences of crime that's completely independent from police/arrest records. Does the US not do this?
But the point is that would not tell us anything about the relative frequency of the crime when it's not prosecuted!
You are saying, effectively, that we know that smoke always comes from fire simply because when you light a fire, you see smoke.
You can't argue that policing deters crime simply because when there is policing, crimes are prosecuted. That makes a lot of bad assumptions about the nature of crime itself that I don't think a single criminologist would follow you on.
> You can't argue that policing deters crime simply because when there is policing, crimes are prosecuted.
Why couldn't you? Defund the police = less prosecutions, less policing = more criminals...
Why wouldn't someone argue easily proven points that more police = more safety (Yes, some corruption does exist but it's not like that corruption goes away when the police do.)
"...from that perspective, investing in more police officers to save lives provides a pretty good bang for the buck. Adding more police, they find, also reduces other serious crimes, like robbery, rape, and aggravated assault."
I don't see why this necessarily follows. Unless, e.g., the only reason you are not killing your neighbor is because your pretty sure you will be prosecuted for it.
To view the whole world as just itching to commit crimes as soon as they can get away with it is just already buying into the presuppositions of policing the original gp was interrogating.
Like its fine I guess if you want to have this pseudo-Hobbesian outlook to it all, but you can't pretend its something logical/rational. Because it simply isn't!
Most of the time. Certain crimes (eg public intoxication) often have an arrest followed by letting the person go when they’ve sobered up, so no official prosecution but not no arrest.
Yeah, but protestors are frequently arrested and charged with completely made up charges. It is just a tactic how to discouraged protests. The cops doing arrests know about it, prosecutors know about it, defense layers knows about it and protesters know about it.
It has nothing to do with deterring crimes or crime rates, it is just politics.
The police where I live are transparently useless. Someone tried to steal my car at bart. Even my auto insurance didn't bother asking for a police report while paying out $3k for a repair to the door. Everyone involved understands it's an utter waste of time and not a thing will happen.
Twenty years ago, in a small college town, my car was broken into and the stereo stolen. I called the police out and the cop said, “okay, what do you want me to do about it?”
Well, I don’t know. What should be done about this? I guess I thought my report might be tabulated, that perhaps a pawn shop or two might be called. My wife and I were living financial-aid-reimbursement-check to MGIB check to work-study check at the time. We got the one of the cheapest car stereos we could find, but it still hurt. We had just gotten it installed literally that day, and the next morning it was gone.
I’m sorry to have wasted your time, officer. There’s probably a kid with a one-hitter that you could arrest on your way back to the station.
That's very interesting. It would explain why the "high level" takes such as papers and articles keep saying crime is plummeting but all the anecdotal accounts are "crime is getting worse and worse and nobody does anything about it".
But that's been true for generations. It wouldn't explain some perceived surge now.
What does explain it is what explains many other things that don't match facts, about the economy, vaccines, climate change, election legitimacy, Obama's birthplace, etc. Whatever the conservative message machine focuses on, generally a large portion of the population believes.
I said to the clerk "that's a 99-2003 GMC Sierra in case you want to tell them when you call it in"
And he replied "oh we don't even call the police.. they won't do anything"
I was so angry I called corporate on the way home. Corporate told me "oh yes that's right, that's our policy. We have insurance for that!"
I said "that's great you have insurance, but I'd like my police department and newspaper to know my town is going to hell..."