Police budgets are up in cities across America. It is a tale as old as time that politicians profit by whipping up crime panic and accusing opponents of being soft on the problem. And so it goes in 2022, with candidates—mostly conservatives, but in addition some Democrats attempting to position themselves as centrists—insisting that 1) crime is rising, and a pair of) it is the fault of criminal justice reform policies. Each claims are highly suspect (see this recent Roundup for more on crime data), and particularly so the flavour of blame that means this mythical crime wave is the fault of liberals and progressives “defunding the police.”
Yes, “defund the police” became a well-liked rallying cry in the summertime of 2020, as people everywhere in the country took to the streets to protest police brutality. And, yes, it could still be heard as a refrain in some activist circles. But at the same time as some mainstream politicians briefly flirted with this rhetoric, it’s never been a serious policy proposal, nor one which many (if any) leaders—local or national—have acted upon.
President Joe Biden—long a friend of the police and proponent of dubious crime panic policies—recently proposed in his Safer America Plan some $37 billion in federal funding for cops. “President Biden’s fiscal yr 2023 budget requests a completely paid-for latest investment of roughly $35 billion to support law enforcement and crime prevention – along with the President’s $2 billion discretionary request for these same programs,” noted the White House.
Cities and counties, too, have been raising police budgets. ABC News “examined the budgets of greater than 100 cities and counties and located 83% are spending no less than 2% more on police in 2022 than in 2019.”
The ABC News evaluation included most major big and mid-size metropolitan areas, including Albuquerque, Anchorage, Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boise, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisville, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, Recent Orleans, Recent York City, Newark, Oakland, Omaha, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and Wichita, amongst others.
Of the 109 areas examined, 49 raised law enforcement funding by greater than 10 percent and 91 raised it by no less than 2 percent. Only 8 places cut funding to law enforcement by greater than 2 percent.
Nonetheless, politicians, pundits, and police persist in spreading the politically convenient myth that law enforcement agencies have been massively defunded. “Despite what the general public record shows, an evaluation of broadcast transcripts reveals that candidates, law enforcement leaders and tv hosts discussed the impact of ‘defunding the police’ greater than 10,000 times the last two years and the mentions aren’t subsiding this campaign season, ABC found.
Take scandal plagued Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva. He claims that crime is up because “defunding has consequences.” Meanwhile, “his agency’s budget is up greater than $250 million,” based on ABC. In Los Angeles County, the police budget was as much as $3.6 billion in 2021–2022, from $3.3 billion in 2018–2019.
“Even when the cuts were real, the premise that lower police spending results in increased crime (or the opposite way around) is counter to many years of evidence, based on public data and criminal justice experts,” ABC points out:
An ABC OTV evaluation of state and native police funding and violent crime data within the U.S. overall between 1985 and 2020 found no relationship between year-to-year police spending and crime rates. (An evaluation by the Washington Post found similar results from 1960 to 2018.)
Further evaluation of Los Angeles County’s own crime data show violent crime numbers don’t move up or down with any relationship to money spent on law enforcement or the variety of officers on patrol.
But these days, budget cuts are resolutely not the case in lots of places.
In Chicago, the police budget was $1.9 billion in 2021–2022, up from $1.7 billion in 2018–2019. In Phoenix, the police budget in 2021–2022 was $786.7 million, up from $687.8 million in 2018–2019. And even in places where there have been some drops, the budgets are still massive. As an example, in Recent York City, the 2021–2022 budget was all the way down to $5.4 billion from $5.6 billion in 2018–2019. This yr’s budget continues to be up from $5.2 billion in 2020–2021.
FREE MINDS
Baby bump appears to be continuing. A National Bureau of Economic Research paper from Martha J. Bailey, Janet Currie & Hannes Schwandt drills down into the info on the COVID-19 baby bump. Here’s the abstract:
We use restricted natality microdata covering the universe of U.S. births for 2015-2021 and California births from 2015 to August 2022 to look at the childbearing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although fertility rates declined in 2020, these declines appear to reflect reductions in travel to the U.S. Childbearing within the U.S. amongst foreign-born moms declined immediately after lockdowns began—nine months too soon to reflect the pandemic’s effects on conceptions. We also find that the COVID pandemic resulted in a small “baby bump” amongst U.S.-born moms. The 2021 baby bump is the primary major reversal in declining U.S. fertility rates since 2007 and was most pronounced for first births and ladies under age 25, which suggests the pandemic led some women to begin their families earlier. Above age 25, the newborn bump was also pronounced for ladies ages 30-34 and ladies with a school education, who were more prone to profit from working from home. The info for California track the U.S. data closely and suggest that U.S. births remained elevated through the third quarter of 2022.
FREE MARKETS
What happened to the starter home? It has been squeezed out of existence largely by government regulations and policies, suggests Emily Badger in The Recent York Times. American builders used to construct “starter homes”—small-ish but enough for a family, “no-frills homes that might give a family latest to the country or a young couple with student debt a foothold to construct equity”—that might sell for around $100,000 or so within the Nineteen Nineties and $200,000 in today’s dollars. But “the reasonably priced end of the market has been squeezed from every side. Land costs have risen steeply in booming parts of the country. Construction materials and government fees have turn into dearer. And communities nationwide are much more prescriptive today than many years ago about what housing should seem like and the way big it have to be. Some ban vinyl siding. Others require two-car garages. Nearly all make it difficult to construct the sort of home that might sell for $200,000 today.”
“Nationwide, the small detached house has all but vanished from latest construction,” notes Badger. “Only about 8 percent of recent single-family homes today are 1,400 square feet or less. Within the Forties, based on CoreLogic, nearly 70 percent of recent houses were that small.”
The value of land is one problem. Permits and costs from local governments are one other.
In Portland, Ore., loads may cost $100,000. Permits add $40,000-$50,000. Removing a fir tree 36 inches in diameter costs one other $16,000 in fees.
“You’ve got principally regulated me out of anything remotely on the reasonably priced side,” said Justin Wood, the owner of Fish Construction NW.>>
The problem comes at a time when smaller homes are in high demand.
Badger followed up the above piece (published in late September) with one other on starter homes, asking “If America needs starter homes, why are perfectly good ones being torn down?“
QUICK HITS
That is outrageous. A 72-year-old U.S. citizen was sentenced to 16 years in prison and subject to torture in *Saudi Arabia* for years-old tweets he posted while in america. His son is accusing the State Department of mishandling the case. https://t.co/RiUEvKZ1lC pic.twitter.com/x1bFuHkQsN
— Sarah McLaughlin (@sarahemclaugh) October 18, 2022
• Don’t blame migrants and “open borders” for fentanyl entering the country, writes Reason‘s Fiona Harrigan.
• GloriFi, billed as a conservative alternative to the likes of PayPal and traditional banks, is off to a rocky start.
• Student loan debt relief ranks low on the problems that young voters are concerned with:
Only 8 percent of 18-29 yo voters list student debt relief as a top issuehttps://t.co/4don2sfhq6 pic.twitter.com/fuVWIXslNk
— dylan matthews (@dylanmatt) October 17, 2022
• Abortion pills are increasingly being smuggled across the U.S. border, reports The Washington Post. “Those interviewed described a pipeline that typically begins in Mexico, where activist suppliers funded largely by private donors secure pills at no cost as in-kind donations or from international pharmacies for as little as $1.50 a dose. U.S. volunteers then receive the pills through the mail — often counting on legal experts to assist minimize their risk — before distributing them to pregnant women in need.”
• “The trend that Substack is an element of will not be a newsletter trend, and even the much-hyped creator economy. We’re a part of a seismic shift within the media economy that’s all about author and creator ownership and independence,” the platform suggests.
• Inside the identity crisis at The Recent York Times.
• The parable of the omniscient authoritarian.
