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Across the country, some policymakers are advocating for defunding police departments. In a new report, @CharlesFLehman explains why this approach to police reform would ultimately stoke more division and bring greater harm. https://www.manhattan-institute.org/policing-without-police-review-evidence?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Organic_Social
“The efficacy of redirecting police funding to social services … runs afoul of basic budget math: the roughly 3% of government dollars spent on policing every year would be just a drop in the bucket of major social welfare programs.”
Defunding the police and redirecting resources to non-police alternatives also lacks convincing evidence they’d be more effective in making communities safer and “would be devastating to the communities deprived of policing.”
Data from the impact of the 1994 Crime Bill indicates that funding police is a better approach to reduce crime: “adding one cop per 10,000 people reduced violent crimes by 3.7%, robberies by 5%, murders by 3.2%, and burglaries by 2.2%.”
. @CharlesFLehman: “Public safety—from crime and from police misconduct—was, as so many issues regrettably are, subsumed into the culture war, pushing participants to take an unnuanced, all-or-nothing stance.”
