Missed By That Much

Megan McArdle uses her Washington Post column to critique President Trump’s remarks on crime in Washington, DC. On the one hand, she rejects deploying the National Guard:

I make a point of agreeing with President Donald Trump whenever he is right about something, and I’m afraid he is right that in D.C., crime and disorder is a major problem. It is not as big a problem as it was a few years ago, but with crime, as with cancer, “somewhat less of a problem than it was” is not really very good news.

This does not justify Trump’s harebrained scheme to deploy the National Guard to patrol the streets, an idea that marries sinister overtones with very limited effectiveness. Nor is the problem likely to be solved by federalizing D.C. law enforcement and prosecutions, as he suggested at a Monday news conference. But Trump’s critics will not talk him out of these plans by conjuring the specter of a fascist takeover, nor by arguing that he shouldn’t be worried about crime, because after all, look how much it’s fallen!

On the other hand, pooh-poohing DC crime is no solution:

D.C. had 187 homicides in 2024, or about 27 for every 100,000 residents. That is, to be sure, a massive 32 percent drop from the 273 people who were killed in 2023, but that probably wasn’t much comfort to those 187 people or their grieving families. And it’s horrific compared with Boston, which had 3.7 homicides per 100,000 residents during that same time frame, New York City (4.7) or Los Angeles (7.1). Even a further reduction in 2025 — year-to-date homicides have fallen 12 percent compared with the same period last year — won’t bring those numbers anywhere near where they should be. This is the capital city of our country. We ought to be able to do at least as well as other major cities.

Unfortunately, her proposals—increasing the number of police officers and prosecutors—are ill-considered. The reason is simple: the issues producing crime are cultural ones, social issues rather than lack of enforcement.

I remember the old days when libertarian Megan was posting as “Jane Galt” on her own site. I wonder what younger Megan would have thought of today’s Megan’s proposals?

Let’s compare Japan’s old capital, Kyoto, with DC. Kyoto has (PDF) about 300 police officers per 100,000 population; DC has twice as many per capita. Boston, which she cites approvingly, has fewer police officers. If you consider the sizes of the police forces of Chicago, New York, etc. and their respective crime rates, you arrive at a disquieting realization: there is no causal relationship between how many police officers there are and the crime rate. That’s completely consistent with a study I’ve been citing for more than twenty years (of Omaha) which found no material difference between a high police presence and a low one in different areas of the city that were similar in population and demographics.

I haven’t bothered to do the research on the number of prosecutors but I’m willing to bet a shiny new time that the results are similar with prosecutors as those for police officers.

I also don’t agree with the views of our mayor (possibly the least popular mayor in the country) that the way to reduce crime is more summer programs for young people.

My own view is that enforcing the laws, all laws, is one of the keys to reducing crime but it’s not nearly enough. I would suggest that the number of single parent households headed by women are lower in Boston than they are in DC but that the number of gang members per 100K population is higher. The effort should be directed at reducing the influence of gangs and producing conditions under which families will remain intact.