Canada proof that throwing money at policing won’t beat crime
While annual police budgets continue to grow, there is little debate in the media about its cost to taxpayers and the value for money in relation to crime reduction.
In 2023, the cost of policing to Canadian taxpayers closed in on $20-billion (about R270-billion) for the first time. It represented a 50% in the cost of policing from 20 years ago. Yet it coincided with disturbing increases in violent crime in Canada. Murders are up.
Violent crime has returned to levels seen 20 years ago.
Canada’s murder rate is second only to the US’s among G7 countries, and is rising as the neighbour’s rate drops.
With one in three women experiencing some form of violence in their lifetimes, intimate partner and sexual violence is now recognised as being at epidemic levels.
Though much of the rhetoric for justifying increasing police budgets is about crime, an analysis of trends over the last 20 years in Canada could not find any correlation between increases in municipal police budgets and a reduction in crime rates.
Studies in the UK and the US show that investments in programmes tackling risk factors give better returns than innovations like problem-oriented policing.
Police budget increases do not impact crime rates significantly and do not make people safer.
When the UK cut police budgets along with other government services by 20%, it had no dramatic impact on crime rates.
A simple comparison between Chicago and Toronto, which have almost the same populations, shows that Chicago’s 13 000 police officers, which is 7 000 more than Toronto, have not been enough to close the gap from Chicago’s 600 homicides annually to Toronto’s 70.
Increases in violent crime in Canada are happening in concert with increases in spending on policing, as well as clogged courts and overcrowded jails.
This means more harm to victims and less public money available for initiatives that improve community safety.
In 2008, researchers at -Canada’s justice department examined the social and economic costs of crime, including estimates of the tangible and intangible harm to victims.
In our review, we followed the same methodology to update their analysis to 2022 dollars and the current population.
The annual total, including court and corrections/rehabilitation costs, was $22-billion, 68% of which was for policing.
In addition, our estimates of the costs of harm to victims are $23-billion for tangible costs like property and productivity losses and at least $100-billion for intangible costs like pain and suffering.
We’ve previously examined programs that showed addressing risk factors can reduce crime but there are few studies delving into the return of investment on these programs.
For some time, Canadian experts have cited a 2010 study that found for every dollar spent on child care and parenting programmes, the community gained roughly seven dollars worth of benefits in reduced criminal involvement and costs to the justice system.
Today, there are existing programmes and initiatives where the return on investment is much higher.
Stop Now and Plan is a Canadian programme that counsels young people on how to deal with emotions in social situations and helps families through interventions with
children ages six to 12, which studies have found gives a $32 return on investment per dollar spent.
Life skills training for youth aged 12 to 14 years old reduces alcohol and drug abuse and -violence with a cost benefit of $25 per dollar spent.
This is a US initiative that’s been replicated in Canada.
Public Safety Canada has illustrated the impact of Stop Now and Plan, along with a -programme helping youth at risk to avoid a life of crime and a support programmes for families.
Its estimates are more conservative than the aforementioned studies but are nevertheless impressive because they illustrate large savings to taxpayers in Canada through early intervention.
They show a 30% decrease in spending on policing, courts and corrections – potentially $7-billion in taxpayer savings a year for each program.
Taxpayers could save another $7-billion in costs like lost productivity and property loss and $30-billion pertaining to the harm inflicted on victims of crime.
The evidence is clear: making people safer is about being smart with investments that reduce crime, not increasing taxes to pay for what doesn’t yield the desired results.
- This edited article was first -published in The Conversation
