Police Don’t Make Societies Safe — Social Equity Does
If police and prisons made us safer, the United States would be the safest country in the world. We lock up more folks than any other country, including many of those the State Department and American human rights groups routinely denounce as “authoritarian.” If US police were an army, it would be the third-largest in the world based on spending.
Yet, in terms of crime, the United States is considerably worse off than most high-income countries. We’re nearly tied with Iraq and Ukraine on composite rankings of crime.
In the heat of the uprising over the police murder of George Floyd last summer, there were widespread calls for cities to divest from policing and spend more money addressing the root causes of crime.
But fast-forward to one year later, and we’re seeing a backlash against the defund movement. In response to an uptick in murders nationwide, politicians are defaulting to the dubious common sense of policing as the only logical response to crime.
