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'No consistent association' between police funding and crime rates in Canada, study indicates (www.cbc.ca)

submitted 1 year ago by sik0fewl@kbin.social to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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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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[+] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca -8 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] karlhungus@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago

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.