Wednesday, December 06, 2023
A crisis in policing
The graphic above is from an intriguing New York Times piece titled "An Early Warning That Police May Be in Decline," The article correctly describes two unmistakable and probably related trends: That there are fewer police at work in urban areas, and a sharp drop in the clearance rate for crimes.
What isn't played up in the story, though, is a third trend that has developed in the last year or two (depending on the place): a sharp drop in crime. While there are exceptions (like DC), in most of the country crime has gone down.
To sum up, three things are going on at once:
-- There are fewer police at work
-- Fewer crimes are being solved, and
-- Crime is going down.
The underlying story, I think, is that bigger forces than the number of police or clearance rates are at work-- specifically, the fading of the pandemic and its destabilizing effects on our society.
I don't doubt that if we solved more crimes-- particularly those very harmful ones that relatively few people commit, like shootings-- the crime rates would go down even more. I advocate for that as part of my job.
Still, we probably overstate at times the impact of policing relative to these larger social forces when we discuss crime trends.
