It has been suggested that even if they have no obligation to protect you, your family, or your property the police serve a useful function by deterring crime. While I think that is theoretically true and it may even have been truer once upon a time, I don’t believe it is true now. Let’s just take one crime, homicide as an example. When the Chicago Sun-Times dug into the CPD’s homicide clearance rates here’s what they learned:
There are second things to note about the same year clearance rate. First, it represents a fraction and sometimes a pretty small fraction of the number of murders. Second, “clearance” does not mean anyone was arrested:
Half of those cases —199 —were closed “exceptionally,†meaning no one was charged. Under departmental policy, detectives are allowed to clear a case when the suspect is dead, prosecutors refuse to make a charge or police believe they know who did it but don’t make an arrest.
What’s more, one of every seven cases taken off CPD’s books last year was actually committed more than 10 years ago, including one that happened a half-century ago, which CPD attributed to providing extra resources to the department’s Cold Case team. Since those cases were officially cleared in 2021, they are counted against the 797 murder total, further improving last year’s clearance rate even though they happened years before.
When all is said and done, the department actually made arrests in fewer cases than in 2020, when 209 people were charged, figures show.
A little back-of-the-envelope calculation tells you that, if the clearance rate was, say, 20% and half of those clearances don’t result in anybody being charged, that means that 10%—1 in 10—homicies resulted in charges being filed.
Third, the Cook County States Attorney’s conviction rate is not 100%. It’s all crime conviction rate is somewhere around 70% and that figure is achieved by not “approving” a lot of cases.
But let’s just use that 70% figure as a rule of thumb. That means that of the 10%-19% of cases on which charged were filed, 70% were convicted, i.e. 7%-14% are convicted.
So, sure, if apprehension, arrest, conviction, and punishment were sure, swift, and certain, I believe that the police would deter crime. But I don’t believe the actual end-to-end performance of our justice system deters anything. If you think it does, IMO the burden of proof is on you to prove it.
Update
In comments some questions have been raised about selecting homicide as an indicator. Here’s the CPD’s overall statistics for 2020:
Note that 2020 was the height of Chicago’s COVID-19 lockdowns. Other than for the homicide statistics I doubt that many conclusions can be drawn. I know that the longer term trend for robberies has been down but the decline is so small IMO it’s meaningless. A 1-2% decline is margin of error stuff. Its explanation could as easily be a decline in reporting as a decline in robberies.
Here is their more detailed breakdown:
I think their statistics for robberies are completely meaningless, not just because of the anomalous circumstances but because of how they’re tabulated. A $500 theft counts as one theft; so does a $100,000 theft. What is presently being reported is systematic looting of high-end retailers. For a really meaningful analysis you’d need to factor in the dollar value of thefts A graph perhaps? As it is I think it’s meaningless.
One more point. Chicago has the highest ratio of police to population of any major city. If police were a deterrent to crime wouldn’t Chicago have a lot less crime than, say, New York or Los Angeles? It doesn’t. The simplest conclusion is that police are not in fact a deterrent to crime.
“Let’s just take one crime, homicide as an example.”
No, let’s not. This is a crime particularly prevalent in inner city areas and gang related, with the perp-on-perp and neighborhood omerta dynamics affecting any statistics and analysis of broader policing efficacy.
It says almost nothing about what’s going on with smash and grab in retail areas, car jackings, home invasions and petty burglary, aggravated assault, stolen cars……….etc.
And it doesn’t deal with the current dynamic of prosecutors refusing to charge, and the knock on effect that has on police. Prosecutors and police are different things.
I’m sure there are statistics that deal with a broader array of crimes. But the murder stats dominated by inner cities is a very bad sample set.
This isn’t like you. Its more like a Bernius special.
The reason I picked homicide is because the statistics for crimes against property are so easy to “cook”. For one thing it’s a fact that people don’t report every burglary. In particular store owners don’t report every instance of shoplifting—that’s why retail inventories keep track of “shrinkage”. It’s a term inclusive of shoplifting, damage, and miscounting. I know that it’s widely believed among retailers that most shoplifting is by employees. I observed more than one owner or manager with his hand in the till in the days when I was watching retail operations closely.
Here’s CPD’s statistics for 2020. Interestingly, the CPD responds to calls about half the time for days and afternoons and about 75% of the time for midnight shifts. The CPD’s info on looting is here. All but one of the suspects apprehended for looting are black. The other is Hispanic.
Clearance for carjacking is around 6%. The statistics for other crimes is pretty opaque.
Flip-flopping Drew? I was the one who pointed out looking at the broader violent crime rates. Homicide is actually pretty rare. Unless you are selling/buying drugs or like to hang out in bars and assert your manhood when getting dissed, homicide just isn’t a risk. It is the other crimes, like you describe, that have a lot more to do with daily life for everyone. Which is, by the way, one of the reasons the school shootings and mass shootings in general stand out. You cant avoid them by avoiding the drug trade.
Dave is correct that homicide stats will always be more accurate and unlikely to not get reported. Property crimes dont all get reported, but it doesnt matter that much since they are important as trending tools. In any given year they may be more or less accurate but the overall trend is what we want to track.
Steve
Your stats actually list theft under $500 and over $500. Think you need 2021 data to make this more meaningful.
Steve
I agree. Comparables for 2021 are not presently available.
I don’t think that either “Under $500” or “over $500” are meaningful. How many “Under $500” thefts go completely unreported? My guess is most of them. For “Over $500” stealing a flat screen TV and throwing it into your van and stealing all of the flatscreen TVs in a big box store and hauling them away in a semi each are listed as one incident even though they’re different in kind.
The real problem is in not recognizing the locality of the occurrence of crime (urban areas – uh, er, “high crime areas”), and the attendant attitudes and causes. Shootings, armed robbery etc are much more prevalent in these areas. Gangs. A no snitch attitude. Illicit gain. Those are the causes. And unless police go back to walking beats it won’t change.
What has changed more recently is the spread of criminal behavior to what were previously considered safe areas. This has occurred as crime has gone unpunished, mostly due to whack job DA’s and progressive politicians. Criminals see easy pickins. To the degree this is evidence that policing does not work it is because of police frustration with the pols and DA’s.
The way I’ve phrased it in the past is that legislators, law enforcement officers, states attorneys, and judges need to be rowing in the same direction.