Why is almost everybody against more police ?
Are we afraid that we get a police state ?
Do leftish people do not want to concede to rightwing political agendas ?
Above points are my real questions.
I have personally no issues when our police force would double in my country when that deals with the issues we have with crime.
Not more police officers to get more guns on the streets, but to stop the "parasites" that fuel uncertainty and get away with it.
To prevent young people getting tempted by crime to become a criminal, with a high risk that they get disconnected from society, and become a life-long unemployed (or end up in jobs that under-utilise their potential for themselves and the economy).
And no... I am not for higher punishments in prison at all. Our current policy in NL is fully focussed at re-integration of criminals at a very high cost compared to most western countries. And I believe that is the right way to handle criminals.
Re-integrate and get them jobs and a future in our society. The very few that are mentally sick another issue, too complicated and only distracting to discuss here.
(those "high" re-integration cost perhaps not that high if you make the full cost calculation where an ex-criminal ending up as a non-criminal life-long unemployed, will cost our NL government around 38,000 Euro per year from social security cost + missed taxes)
Some general background:
There is violent crime and economical crime. Violent crime imo the first priority.
But violent crime gets almost all the attention of newsmedia and politics and discussions on "more" police are mostly driven by those discussions. Dealing with root causes of a social nature part of that discussion. The value of such "soft" arguments very much depending on country culture and tactics in politics (the votes).
Economical damage getting little attention, and yet the cost of that damage is in my country far higher than the cost of all the unemployed people in my country from social security (at good level).
I saw an article that cyber crime on companies is currently about 1% of GDP. This mostly affected small companies of 1-50 employees (incl self-employed).
I digged in and saw that in my country damage & cost from crime over 2005-2015 are estimated on average at a minimum of 3% of GDP. That was mainly before cyber crime got more strongly. Of that 3% of GDP, roughly 25% was in companies and 75% in households. That 3% does not include the big money crime like moneylaundering, briberies, abusive lobbying.
We spend in my country roughly 1% of GDP for the total police force. Most developed countries have 300-400 police officers per 100,000 people. The typical average total cost per police officer (incl material cost etc) about twice the average salary of that country.
ALL our many political parties put every year on their manifestos, that they want more police (mostly a minimal increase), but it never happens really. Population growth goes faster.
The left-wing parties want more admin like police (to free up fully trained police officers from the many admin tasks, to get more police dealing with E-crime, cyber crime, abuse by legal companies, sexual harrassment, etc).
Rightwing parties want more uniforms dealing with violence, but struggle with "too many civil servants", "too big government".
Nothing really happens, except restructurings to get higher productivity per police officer.
EDIT
Preventing, dis-encouraging crime as factor to avoid life long unemployment or worse jobs for tempted people.
In social wellfare states the total cost of unemployed people are high for the governments.
Here a graph done for six European countries and the report.
(my country is not in that report but is at 38,000 Euro per year, which helps explaning why we spend so much on re-integration of criminals, even though it has per prison term only the moderate chance of 50% to succeed)
http://www.efsi-europe.eu/fileadmin..._on_the_cost_of_unemployment_January_2013.pdf
Are we afraid that we get a police state ?
Do leftish people do not want to concede to rightwing political agendas ?
Above points are my real questions.
I have personally no issues when our police force would double in my country when that deals with the issues we have with crime.
Not more police officers to get more guns on the streets, but to stop the "parasites" that fuel uncertainty and get away with it.
To prevent young people getting tempted by crime to become a criminal, with a high risk that they get disconnected from society, and become a life-long unemployed (or end up in jobs that under-utilise their potential for themselves and the economy).
And no... I am not for higher punishments in prison at all. Our current policy in NL is fully focussed at re-integration of criminals at a very high cost compared to most western countries. And I believe that is the right way to handle criminals.
Re-integrate and get them jobs and a future in our society. The very few that are mentally sick another issue, too complicated and only distracting to discuss here.
(those "high" re-integration cost perhaps not that high if you make the full cost calculation where an ex-criminal ending up as a non-criminal life-long unemployed, will cost our NL government around 38,000 Euro per year from social security cost + missed taxes)
Some general background:
There is violent crime and economical crime. Violent crime imo the first priority.
But violent crime gets almost all the attention of newsmedia and politics and discussions on "more" police are mostly driven by those discussions. Dealing with root causes of a social nature part of that discussion. The value of such "soft" arguments very much depending on country culture and tactics in politics (the votes).
Economical damage getting little attention, and yet the cost of that damage is in my country far higher than the cost of all the unemployed people in my country from social security (at good level).
I saw an article that cyber crime on companies is currently about 1% of GDP. This mostly affected small companies of 1-50 employees (incl self-employed).
I digged in and saw that in my country damage & cost from crime over 2005-2015 are estimated on average at a minimum of 3% of GDP. That was mainly before cyber crime got more strongly. Of that 3% of GDP, roughly 25% was in companies and 75% in households. That 3% does not include the big money crime like moneylaundering, briberies, abusive lobbying.
We spend in my country roughly 1% of GDP for the total police force. Most developed countries have 300-400 police officers per 100,000 people. The typical average total cost per police officer (incl material cost etc) about twice the average salary of that country.
ALL our many political parties put every year on their manifestos, that they want more police (mostly a minimal increase), but it never happens really. Population growth goes faster.
The left-wing parties want more admin like police (to free up fully trained police officers from the many admin tasks, to get more police dealing with E-crime, cyber crime, abuse by legal companies, sexual harrassment, etc).
Rightwing parties want more uniforms dealing with violence, but struggle with "too many civil servants", "too big government".
Nothing really happens, except restructurings to get higher productivity per police officer.
EDIT
Preventing, dis-encouraging crime as factor to avoid life long unemployment or worse jobs for tempted people.
In social wellfare states the total cost of unemployed people are high for the governments.
Here a graph done for six European countries and the report.
(my country is not in that report but is at 38,000 Euro per year, which helps explaning why we spend so much on re-integration of criminals, even though it has per prison term only the moderate chance of 50% to succeed)
http://www.efsi-europe.eu/fileadmin..._on_the_cost_of_unemployment_January_2013.pdf
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