this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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There's "no consistent association" between police funding and crime rates across the country, according to a published study by University of Toronto researchers.

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[–] [email protected] -4 points 8 months ago (20 children)

That's literally impossible to be true. Maybe if their dataset was only police depts where they are receiving between 200% and 300% of what they need to maintain operations. But there's no way a community with literally no police at all wouldn't have a higher crime rate than a basic minimal police force operating at like 80% funding.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (10 children)

How is it impossible to be true?

I'm not sure how you could make this argument without making assumptions about base crime rates.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 8 months ago (9 children)

If the headline is to be believed, then completely abolishing the Toronto police would have 0 impact on crime rates in Toronto. To my mind, it seems impossible that that would be true.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It seems like you maybe thinking this is saying police do nothing, it isn't.

No consistent association means the data doesn't back up higher or lower funding having an impact on crime. It doesn't say anything about rates when the funding is zero or when funding is very high.

I think it means can't pay to reduce crime, or not pay and expect crime to go up.

Testing for zero would be extremely difficult, because we only have one Toronto sized city in Canada.

I'm guessing here but I suspect that there's a significant number of places with zero police presence that have very little crime. And this article suggests that there are very well funded police presences where crime still happens.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

No consistent association means the data doesn't back up higher or lower funding having an impact on crime. It doesn't say anything about rates when the funding is zero or when funding is very high.

Is "zero" not "lower"?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If there's no zero in the dataset, then we don't have any zero about data. It could be, for instance, that some police have a large effect, but that you hit diminishing returns incredibly quickly.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

That's literally what I said elsewhere in this thread. People are putting words in my mouth all over this thread but literally all I was saying is that it's impossible that the headline is true verbatim.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

How so? The study showed no consistent association between funding and crime rates. That is true verbatim.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Skim the article, it's 20 large municipality's, nowhere is 0 mentioned

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