Their job is not to solve crimes, their job is to get people convicted, the subtle difference being that they’ll turn non-crimes into crimes (for example, they’ll chose to legally interpret things which can go both ways as crimes which require prosecution, which is why one often sees kids criminalized for childish bullshit) and it doesn’t matter if the person convicted is innocent, all that matters is that somebody got convicted (so, for example, they won’t try and find exonerating evidence).
This partly explains their tendency to take an adversarial posture towards people who aren’t from their group, also partly because that posture indirectly feeds back on them (people don’t treat them as they treat other people) and partly because they do tend to get exposed far more than most people to the seedy side of humanity.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Police solve something like less than 2% of reported crimes.
Even a libertarian can see this is fucking stupid, imagine a restaurant that gets 2% of its orders correct and served in a timely manner.
Police do not primarily exist to solve crimes.
They primarily exist as a goon/thug class to protect property and capital, all other behaviors and effects are ancillary.
If Police wanted to actually lessen crime, they’d either attack its root causes and use significant parts of their budgets to fund affordable housing and public schools, or massively reorient toward pursuing white collar crime, which is often of such a huge financial scale that it basically directly impoverishes society at a large scale.
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
That figure is a little misleading, but I understand how you picked it up because it’s everywhere.
Police “clear” crimes to be progressed for prosecution.
Prosecutors “prosecute” crimes. It’s this that the 2% figure is aimed at. The clearance rates (the job done by the police) is higher.
According to this article[1], 22% of reported serious crimes led to arrests. 4% (of reported serious crimes) led to convictions. They then halve both of those numbers to account for unreported crimes. The article still uses the 2% figure in the headline despite the nuance in the article.
That might sound academic given the overall point you make still stands. I just thought it was worth mentioning.
1: theconversation.com/police-solve-just-2-of-all-ma…
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 hours ago
Ok then, so more technically, and more generously to police from a purely reactionary perspective of ‘they can only respond to reports’… they do an adequate job of clearing 4% of what actually gets reported to them.
I know that cops dont actually prosecute, I made that post before falling asleep, I was a bit loose with language.
Their role in the prosecution process is basically to be witnesses, to gather evidence for the trial.
And, unless I am misunderstanding this… ~82% of the arrests they do actually make … don’t result in convictions, and are thus ‘overarrests’ in some sense… as … you went to all the effort to make an arrest, and it turns out that no actual crime was committed?
Cops have an ~18% chance of making an arrest for a serious crime that actually sticks?
They have an ~82% likelihood that they are overpolicing, like by definition, when it comes to serious crimes?
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Apologies if I sounded like I was lecturing there. I got very into the numbers.
I see the 82% figure you mention too. But I feel out of my depth now. An arrest requires probable cause (a low threshold), whereas courts require reasonable doubt (a high threshold). The gap between these two seems to be what should let police work function. Eg: attorneys examine or challenge the charges, plea deals, case dismissal / acquittal etc. But I’m skimming articles I don’t understand at this point.
82% does seem high to me too. But I also see too many cut-and-dry cases on TV. I don’t know what to think.
callouscomic@lemmy.zip 18 hours ago
So what I’m reading is that police are wrong or bad at what they do ~82% of the time.
sukhmel@programming.dev 17 hours ago
78%, but yes