IN THE RAUCOUS debate over the Republicans' anti-crime package, which the Senate is to take up next month, the hiring of more police officers has become the major point of contention. The outcome of this battle will no doubt be significant for congressional politics, but it will do little to reduce crime in America.
As hard as it may be to believe, there is no direct relationship between the number of police officers and the rate of crime in a community.
In 1991, San Diego and Dallas had about the same ratio of police officers to the population, yet twice as many crimes were reported in Dallas. Cleveland and San Diego had comparable crime rates even though Cleveland had twice as many police officers per capita. As of 1992, Washington had the highest murder rate -- and the most police per square foot -- of any city.
Although police departments were established more than 150 years ago, no one has been able to demonstrate convincingly that adding more police officers lowers the crime rates.
Take Kansas City, Mo. For research purposes, the city's 15 police beats were divided into three comparable groups in the early 1970s. In one, patrols were doubled or tripled. In another, patrols were eliminated entirely, although the police continued to respond to citizens' calls. In the third, no changes were made. After a year guess what happened? Absolutely nothing. The crime rate remained the same in all three groups.
What about foot patrols? Don't they reduce crime by improving the exchange of information between the public and the police? Apparently not. The most thorough study ever done, a 1981 analysis of police beats in Newark, N.J., found that foot patrols had virtually no effect on crime rates. A cop walking the beat did make people feel safer, but, since such patrols can produce a false sense of security, they may actually be a bad policing strategy.
Obviously this is not to say that we could simply disband the police and crime would not increase. Indeed, during the Boston police strike of 1919, crime -- especially looting -- increased enormously. But adding more cops will not significantly reduce the crime rate for a simple reason: Police work is essentially reactive. The police are far better at arresting criminals than preventing crimes. Research has shown that the police discover only about 2.5 percent of all crimes in progress.
Community policing is designed to address this problem. But since the police actually spend less than 20 percent of their time fighting crime -- as against, say, answering nuisance calls, responding to traffic accidents and doing office work -- community policing is mostly public relations. Besides, does anyone seriously believe that a cop on patrol can do anything about the social, political and economic causes of crime.
But wouldn't adding more officers result in more arrests, more people going to jail and thus fewer criminals on the streets? Not really. With our prisons dreadfully overcrowded, there is no place to lock up convicted felons. The number of criminals sent to prison does not depend on how many people police arrest but on how much space there is in prison.
In 1992, the police arrested more than 14 million people, even though local jails and state prisons can hold only 1.2 million. It doesn't make much sense to arrest more people unless you have a place to put them. In any event, there isn't a fixed population of crooks out there. Arresting a drug dealer, prostitute or fence merely opens up a new job opportunity for someone else.
Adding more police officers may be a good way for Republicans and Democrats to demonstrate that they are tough on law and order, but it is not an effective strategy to reduce crime. The awful truth is that there is no law enforcement solution to the crime problem; it is embedded in the social and moral fiber of our society. An insufficient police presence did not cause the problem, and more officers will not solve it.
Richard Moran is professor of sociology and criminology at Mount Holyoke College.