Below is a guest post from Anthony Carilli, Professor of Economics at Hampden Sydney College who writes on the blog Explanatory Power. His post ask the question, what role do we want law enforcement to play in our lives and society?
Do you want cops chasing prostitutes or pickpockets? Vandals or drug dealers? The jerk who stole your identity or the pot head down the street? Every kid in South Park knows that “drugs are bad m-kay.” But are they as bad as the kid who throws the brick through the bakery window? Take some time to read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. Let’s take a look at the seen and the unseen of police budget cuts. We can’t afford to have cops doing both; chasing the thugs who violate our property and the guy who violates no one but himself. Let’s hope police budget cuts lead to more real police work and less police hassling people who merely buy and sell things somebody else doesn’t want them to buy.
As police department budgets are cut, cops react in predictable ways because they are human (see Jenny Dirmeyer’s blog post) and therefore act rationally. Fewer cops means less crime fighting; necessarily (provided not all the laid-off cops weren’t just eating donuts all day). Given less police work can be done, we can ponder along which vector less crime fighting will be done. Cops act rationally, that is, they respond to incentives in predictable ways; in this case the predictable way will be to reduce enforcement of those laws that their superiors find lower valued.
So what types of crimes are lower valued? One easy category is crimes that do not raise revenue; thus we wouldn’t expect speed limit enforcement to take a hit. In fact, we would expect the opposite, because at the margin the enforcement of crimes that raise revenue, to the extent the revenue is kept by the department, has become more valuable. On the other hand, crimes that do not generate revenue for the department become less valuable; so we would expect to see enforcement of those crimes drop; i.e., be traded off for more enforcement of the valuable crimes. Crimes where punishment is through fines will face an increase in enforcement while crimes that are punished by restrict the free movement of the criminal and therefore of no direct benefit to the police department will go under investigate and unresolved.
So, if police react to incentives (they are human after all, see Jenny’s blog below), we can predict which crimes will be under enforce and which will be over enforced as police forces are cut. In general, enforcement high cost low return crimes will be lax while the enforcement of low cost high return crimes will be stepped up. The type of crime that falls into the first category is typically crimes against personal property, vandalism, burglary, theft, identity theft, and the like. Solving these crimes take a great deal of police work with very little pay off to the department. We would, therefore, expect to see the enforcement of property crimes diminish. In a recent USA Today three police spokesman are quoted in three municipalities that telling citizens not to expect a response to property crimes. Oakland, California residents were told, “If you come home to find your house burglarized and you wall, we’re not coming.” In Tulsa, OK residents have stopped reporting property crimes because “they think nothing is going to be done, so why mess with it.” In other words don’t dissuade them of the reality. In Boston suburb of Norton police have told residents not to expect a response for such crimes.
The crimes with a high value to cost ratio will be those that either have low enforcement cost, high payout to the department, or some combination of both. Drug crimes typically carry with them forfeiture of property believed to be used in their distribution and sale; a big pay day for any police department. Drug crimes are more valuable to police departments than property crimes; “think of this: the next property crime could involve a junkie who killed someone the night before.” The implication of executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police is that drug crimes are far worse than property crimes.
Criminals are also rational, so we would expect to see more property crimes being committed since the cost of committing those crimes as fallen. From the perspective of the citizen, however, the cost and benefits of property crimes is upside down from the police brass. The cost of property crimes are born by the property owner. While police departments are finding the net benefit of responding to lesser crimes like burglary and identity theft, falling, the average citizen will find the cost of these rising so a tension will be created between police and its citizens over which crimes are being investigated. As citizens begin to see the tradeoff to being in favor of the continued illegality of victimless crimes like the voluntary exchange of drugs and sexual services is that their property is left unprotected, we are likely to see the popularity of the that stance wane.
Given the choice, I’d rather have the cops keep my property safe than worry about the pot head down the street. You can’t have both…decide!
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