Defunding Police May Be Hazardous to Your Health (Not to Mention Property)

Eric Piza of John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Vijay Chillar of Rutgers School of Criminal Justice have published an article in Justice Evaluation Journal titled The Effect of Police Layoffs on Crime: A Natural Experiment Involving New Jersey’s Two Largest Cities. The published version is behind a paywall, but a post-publication manuscript version is available here.

“Our findings indicate that sudden and drastic reductions in police force size via police officer layoffs can generate significant crime increases.” The results “translate[] to approximately 108 … additional violent crime incidents per month resulting from the layoffs. Using a similar equation, the police layoffs resulted in approximately 103 additional property crime incidents per month in Newark.”

This result tends to confirm what common sense would tell us. Of course, we should not base policy on a single study. There are many factors other than police force size at work. Policing strategy is a big one. Newark PD’s cancellation of hot-spot policing in reaction to the layoffs may well be a contributing factor.

As the authors note, though, a police department’s ability to implement evidence-based strategy depends on having the resources to do so.

City councils who slash police budgets while running scared from Antifa, BLM, et alia may very well be killing people. Common sense has told that all along, and this study provides some empirical confirmation.

Zaid Jilani has this story at National Review on the study.