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Comment by sosborn | Hacker News Reader

It's not really about decreasing crime. It's really about increasing convictions (for better or worse).

This is the part I don’t understand. In the past decades surveillance tech has become more pervasive, and police funding has continued to increase. Yet the percent of homicides “cleared” by police has dropped from 90% to 50% over the past 50 years. All this surveillance, and somehow police continue getting worse at solving crimes

I’m curious as to what elements of policing have been the beneficiaries of increased funding. I’d love to see a budget and staffing breakdown of a police department from the 70s to now. I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s not the investigative side that’s grown hugely. I may well be wrong though, and just showing my bias.

It's possible that people are getting better at committing crimes at a faster rate than police are getting better at solving crimes. Maybe if we teleported today's average police department to the 1800s, the % of cleared homicides would be 100%. Who knows.

My guess is the increased evidence is lowering false convictions but it’s probably still very hard to find and prove the correct perpetrators.

> All this surveillance, and somehow police continue getting worse at solving crimes

Be careful with this line of thinking.

"cleared" generally means either an arrest was made (not a conviction) or they would've made an arrest but weren't able to (i.e. suspect died). A drop of a clearance rate just means it dropped. It only means cops in the past arrested people more often not that they actually arrested (or convicted) the correct people.

Increasing video coverage doesn't simply mean people are more likely to be imprisoned; it can also be used to prove innocence as well. Here's an example of a guy who was able to prove his innocence because he was captured on tape at a baseball game[1].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/sep/29/larry-d...

I’d expect increasing convictions and increasing the perceived likelihood of being convicted would both be negatively correlated with future crime levels.

Why? I mean, intuitively it makes some sense, but harsh penalties for drugs in the U.S. haven't really dented demand.

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