But the point is that would not tell us anything about the relative frequency of the crime when it's not prosecuted!
You are saying, effectively, that we know that smoke always comes from fire simply because when you light a fire, you see smoke.
You can't argue that policing deters crime simply because when there is policing, crimes are prosecuted. That makes a lot of bad assumptions about the nature of crime itself that I don't think a single criminologist would follow you on.
> You can't argue that policing deters crime simply because when there is policing, crimes are prosecuted.
Why couldn't you? Defund the police = less prosecutions, less policing = more criminals...
Why wouldn't someone argue easily proven points that more police = more safety (Yes, some corruption does exist but it's not like that corruption goes away when the police do.)
"...from that perspective, investing in more police officers to save lives provides a pretty good bang for the buck. Adding more police, they find, also reduces other serious crimes, like robbery, rape, and aggravated assault."
I don't see why this necessarily follows. Unless, e.g., the only reason you are not killing your neighbor is because your pretty sure you will be prosecuted for it.
To view the whole world as just itching to commit crimes as soon as they can get away with it is just already buying into the presuppositions of policing the original gp was interrogating.
Like its fine I guess if you want to have this pseudo-Hobbesian outlook to it all, but you can't pretend its something logical/rational. Because it simply isn't!
I know causation isn't correlation but all you have to do is look around and see that given more opportunities? people take advantage of others.
AKA: more "criminals".
"the only reason you're not killing your neighbor" thats a bit extreme but... yes.
"you can't pretend it's logical rational" Of course I can.
One, it is logical/rational - it's the same reason why people smoke less when you raise taxes on cigs. If it costs more? people will do it less. That cost might be taxes... or possible repercussions. Public shunning. Jailtime. Death penalty. You can pick your topic and if we look at push back against "bad" then the result is less bad.
Two, who says humans are logical/rational? We aren't that far out of the animal stage... we can pretend that we aren't driven by base emotions and the like. Humans are more often than not illogical and irrational. Making stupid decisions. IE: Gambling, drinking, drugs, cheating, etc.
So it's absolute defensible that more police (or, at a baser level, more consequences and more visibility of those consequences for bad decisions) results in less crime (or bad decisions). It's also absolutely defensible that humans are not rational/logical.
