Pt. 3 - How to Solve Crime

Ivy Saves the World in Five Steps - a how-to series on the world's big, scary problems, and what I would do to fix them, if I had any power whatsoever and were a motivated individual

Pt. 3 - How to Solve Crime

The current police system is self regulated. It shouldn’t be. Absolute power corrupts absolutely - there are no exceptions, including (or maybe especially) people in authority roles. Police forces operate with a brotherhood mentality common to many high-stress jobs - think soldiers, or firemen (yes, ‘firemen,’ we’ll call them ‘firefighters’ when they let women join). Officers face a unique roll in the community which is not well understood by outsiders. They have each other’s backs, and rely on each other for their very day-to-day survival; it’s an intimate bond. As such, it’s unreasonable and against the interest of everyone involved to ask police forces to investigate their own, but that is the current practice.

Even when a neighboring police force is brought in to investigate (as may be the practice when public deaths occur, or cases of gross, public misconduct), there is still a conflict of interest, and a relationship that is far from objective - police forces often work together and must therefore cooperate, and police of any municipality are brethren, brothers, partners in the War on Crime, and the thin blue line between order and chaos. Cloistered internal investigation is a system which is set up to fail, and that isn’t anything groundbreaking or new - we’ve known for a very long time that transparency and accountability go hand in hand. Make it happen already (and no, it’s not something the police are going to come up with on their own, if we just let them do their thing).

Along not-so-similar lines, we need to evaluate our crime-fighting strategies from the perspective of gettin’ er done. Our current system isn’t especially effective or cost efficient. We know that investing in community policing and public dialogue, as well as capacity-building programs which allow people to lead better lives instead of turning to crime, are generally effective and end up saving a lot of money. However, such programs make up a small fraction of police spending, while the bulk goes towards traditional practices which may or may not work at all. For example, do speed limits really influence driving habits or road safety, or is the Autobahn a lot safer than my local freeway? I actually don’t know…but we should find out and act accordingly. (I know the posted speed limit for the 401 in Ontario is 30km/h less than it should be, by international standards, and the flow of traffic is typically right around 30km over the limit...surprise!)

If laws aren’t changing crime rates, then we need to reevaluate both the laws themselves and how we enforce them (including how police interact with various communities), and invest way more resources in changing public perception. We need to try innovative solutions, evaluate for efficacy, and fund the ones that work - fund them like crazy. It’s good for society and for the government’s pocket books - spending money now to figure out what works is a great way to save money in the future. And the whole thing doesn’t need to be especially difficult or ground breaking, because there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. There are hundreds of other countries out there, plus a million more cities, districts, and archipelagos, and they are tackling similar problems to our own. See which ones work. Canada rarely looks past its American neighbor for examples on policy, but there’s a whole world out there with lots of different places doing a lot of cool things to better society and cut crime rates.

Also, you probably should take away the police’s tasers. That seems like a good idea.