As the worldwide protests ignited by the horrific images of Derek Chauvin killing George Floyd proceed into the second week, a specific clarion call has crystallized: “Defund the police.” The powerful call has moved the mayors of Los Angeles and New York City to pledge to reduce their police departments’ budgets and reallocate funds to community organizations and the Minneapolis City Council to vote to disband the police department altogether. Other municipalities are considering similar moves.
Proponents of defunding argue that aggressive policing, which is often concentrated where people of color live, decreases community trust in the police, creates a revolving door of incarceration, and makes communities worse off and the people in them more likely to commit to crime. All these costs are in addition to the risk of death that accompanies armed police presence. Meanwhile, major crimes like murder and rape go unsolved.
The money that goes to the police, activists urge, would be better spent on prevention — education, job creation and housing — and effective remedial measures like mental health intervention, drug rehabilitation and family counseling.
In contrast, opponents of defunding warn city officials that acceding to protesters’ demands in the heat of the moment will compromise community safety, lead to spikes in crime and even pave the road to anarchy. They argue that the best way to ensure community protection while reducing excessive force and misconduct is to invest more money in policing.
Crime data and research support calls to defund.
We examined nationwide data on municipal expenditures and crime rates from 1990 to 2017, and found that crime rates — and thus the need for policing — precipitously declined, while cities’ expenditures on policing significantly increased. In 1990, the U.S. experienced 12 violent crimes per 1,000 people, and cities spent an average of $182 (in today’s dollars) per resident on the police. Compare this to 2017, the latest year with comparable data. The violent crime rate had decreased by 56% to five crimes per 1,000, but the average police budget had increased by 59%, to $292 per resident. Across the 1,088 largest municipalities in the U.S., that change amounted to an aggregate police budget increase of over $17 billion per year.
As spending on police ballooned, cities’ average allocation of funds to health care and public assistance increased by a modest 5-10%. Spending on housing and community development did not increase at all.
But what about defunding opponents’ argument that the crime rate decreased because funding to police — and by extension policing — increased?
Pinpointing the exact causes of the crime decline is difficult, but increased police funding likely did not play a significant role. We found crime rates declined in both cities that increased police budgets and cities that did not. Misdemeanor arrests, like George Floyd’s arrest for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill, account for 80% of all arrests, and according to a recent report by the National Academies of Sciences, they “generate small to null impacts on crime.”
Research indicates that the crime-reduction benefits of aggressive street policing are slim to none. New York City ended its stop-and-frisk program, which disproportionately targeted black and Latino men, and by 2017, stop-and-frisks had decreased by 98% from the peak in 2011. The crime rate had also decreased by 17%. In 2014, the New York police went on an informal strike to express disappointment with Mayor de Blasio and refused to engage in street policing. A recent study found that this reduction in policing correlated with a slightly lower crime rate. Moreover, aggressive law enforcement diminishes police legitimacy, making it harder to solve serious crimes.
At the same time, aggressive policing imposes devastating human costs, as Floyd’s death tragically demonstrates. His brother Philonise put it bluntly, “Is that what a black life’s worth? Twenty dollars?” Non-lethal police interactions are also extremely harmful. A single arrest can damage one’s employment, school performance, finances and mental health.
These costs fall disproportionately on black people. In 2018, 31% of the people arrested for misdemeanors by municipal police were African American, although African Americans comprised just 12% of the population. Such arrest disparities cannot be explained by differing offending rates.
Community organizations have already started stepping in to reduce crime in less harmful ways. Violence interrupters like CURE Violence are using community members to quash beefs between youth groups before they turn violent. CAHOOTS in Eugene, Ore., deploys crisis intervention specialists trained in de-escalation and psychological counseling as first responders. According to a recent study on the crime decline, between 1991 and 2014, cities with more of these anti-violence non-profits saw greater crime reductions than cities with fewer.
Police funds can also be redistributed to schools, job training programs, rape-crisis centers, and housing. Programs that improve prenatal health care and provide free preschool have been shown to have large, long-term crime reducing effects. Providing support services to youth in lieu of arrest reduces crime. Keeping young people who have been arrested out of jail, even without providing services, also does.
In the contest between defunding the police and continuing to provide outsized funding to the police, the research points the way.
Beck is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, Denver. Gruber is a law professor and author of “The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration.”
