The death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police has ignited calls to defund police forces across the country. While reforms targeted at punishing and removing bad cops, such as elimination of qualified immunity in civil cases and weakening of police union protections, may be overdue, cutting police budgets will reduce the size of police forces and pose a clear public safety risk.
Despite some statistically naïve analyses that confuse correlation with causation, social-science literature provides overwhelming evidence that bolstering police forces reduces crime. Hiring more police officers allows departments to engage in community policing and proactive police strategies, such as concentrating more police officers in areas where crime is high—programs that a report from the National Academy of Sciences notes have been shown in high-quality experimental research to reduce crime.
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