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Comment by meindnoch | Hacker News Reader

Exactly. Broken windows theory…

You will surely see some people here saying that the broken windows theory has been debunked (I used to be one of them), so that's why I did not use that phrase, but at the very least I don't think the equation for pursuing the thieves is "the phone is worth 1000 quid, the investigation is 2000, therefore it's not worth it". I think we are too heavily discounting people's lost trust in Police effectiveness that happens because of stories like that.

Reminds me of listening to an engineer justify removing a $5 protection IC (after component-shortage inflation) as the thing it was protecting was $3.

No, if that $3 part takes an ESD discharge, the entire $1000+ assembly is now (as far as the customer is concerned) scrap and needs to be RMA'd and replaced or repaired at our expense and the customer will, quite correctly, think it's unreliable junk from now on.

Even if it was just a $5 part protecting only a $3 part, it still makes sense to keep it. The logistics of returns and customer support for even a small percentage of returns would potentially be worth it.

That would need careful cost-benefit analysis. My instinct is to keep the protection or find a way to retrofit cheaper/available parts too maintain it. But then I'm not in the cheap and shonky consumer tat business.

Sure, the investigation is worth more than a single phone, but you're pretty likely to find 50 phones.

You're very, very unlikely to be robbed by someone who's doing it for the first and only time in their life. Most likely, you'll come across a gang of organized criminals, which you can now put in jail, and recover value worth tens of thousands of pounds, return it back to their owners, restore faith in "the system", and possibly uproot a major crime operation.

It's such a massive fucking win I don't understand why they don't enforce it more.

Pull a few officers of Twitter duty, and maybe do some real police work?

The cost of handling an order of magnitude more cases is significantly expanding the service. Everyone wants excellent public police, health care or education when it affects themselves. But going from average to good to excellent public services take more and more effort. Few countries today are willing to have the long-term public commitment and taxes to make that a reality.

The issue in the UK is that the Police suffers from scope creep. The UK police force has been criticized for expanding its scope to include enforcing anti-hate crime laws and investigating "non-crime hate incidents." (hard to believe that the country that gave us Orwell came up with that phrase). This has diverted resources from more important tasks and led to the allocation of time and money towards activities such as painting their cars in rainbows and raising pride flags in public ceremonies.

Whatever you think of those side-activities, I'm sure fewer people would have any problem with them if they were confident that their possessions would be recovered if stolen (and more important crimes prosecuted).

  >The issue in the UK is that the Police suffers from scope creep. The UK police force has been criticized for expanding its scope to include enforcing anti-hate crime laws and investigating "non-crime hate incidents."...

This ^^ People get frustrated with the fact that they report a robbery or a break-in and the police take no action. But then they read about court cases involving 'hate crimes' which consisted of nothing more than someone being called a name they found offensive, or a dog being taught to do a nazi salute.

Obviously these cases are rare [that's why they make headlines], But the fact they happen at all doesn't do the police's reputation any favours, when there are 'actual' crimes being effectively ignored through claimed lack of resources.

None of the things you are complaining about have much of an operational impact on the British police.

You know what does?

The wholesale destruction of the NHS and ambulance services leading to the police being the first response to mental health issues.

Police are the wrong agency to deal with this, but currently in the UK, the police are pretty much always the first (often only) to deal with MH issues and get people into care/section them etc.

> but currently in the UK, the police are pretty much always the first (often only) to deal with MH issues and get people into care/section them etc.

I can't talk about Scotland, Wales, or NI. But here's the data for England:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/sta...

There were 34,000 detentions under the act. Of these, only 4,150 were detentions following a Section 135 / 136 place of safety order (the bit of the Mental Health Act that the police can use).

The CQC also have their "Monitoring use of the Mental Health Act" report here: https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/monitoring-mental-health...

This strengthens the point you're making. EG https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/monitoring-mental-health... and https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/monitoring-mental-health... both talking about the poor care recieved by patients as a result of the defunding of the NHS and social care systems.

There is no way to recover stolen possessions with a high degree of confidence as there are countless of those types of incidents all the time every day. Most police forces already have less resources than they could use for the more serious cases. Reliably handling lesser serious cases that are even more plentiful would be a large increase in activities and even larger increase in effort. And since a large part of the cost of public services are salaries it would mean a noticeable tax increase. Probably for a long time. Other than that what you are asking isn't really possible.

It could be done if the thief, after having been found guilty, is then forced to pay a fine equal to the cost of the investigation and court costs.

Yes, this could end up being a fine of $10,000 for stealing a $150 phone, but there is an argument to be made that it is justified (and just).

What are the arguments against?

One would be that people who steal $150 phones don't have $10,000 to pay for fines.

Get them work for public for 10k (few months by EU standards).

Somehow the priorities seem to be misplaced. On the London public transport, you're reminded every 3 minutes that you should report "unusual" behaviour to the police, including unwanted staring ("Call 61016 - See it, say it, sorted."), yet they're unable/unwilling to track down a stolen item worth ~£1200 even with accurate GPS coordinates available.

That’s been thoroughly debunked for years.

https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/05/15/northeastern-univer...

There's two things. Maybe it doesn't prevent further crime as well as targeted saturation does, but it sure is nice when the police show up when they are called. Most research focuses on the first but the second is what GP was referring to.

“targeted saturation” was no more than “harass minorities and the homeless”.

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-broken-win...

Legal aid society -- the least worthy source when it comes to policing.

“Creator of 'Broken Windows' Policing Thought it May Lead to Racial Problems”

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/revis...

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/broken-windo...

Again we're talking about two different things. Target saturation vs broken windows. Pretty different

Yes I’m sure if the police used “targeted saturation” in my neighborhood where in the entire county it’s only 3% Black, neither me or more likely my 6 foot 5 20 year old step son would be targeted for “looking suspicious”.

For reference, it’s the most affluent county in GA (not saying much in the grand scheme of things) and I work remotely at $BigTech. So while I make over twice the median household income for the area, we still get looked at suspiciously.

I hear you, and that sucks. Targeted saturation is exactly that IF you live in an area with lots of crime: they look for areas where crime concentrates and do lots of extra stops and extra police presence. If you don't live in an area with lots of crime, it's not targeted and they're doing something else, probably not constructive.

Rather than allowing nerd academics sitting in ivory towers to control our conversation look outside. Have you lived in a city with high crime rates? I have and my friends/family yearn for the return of days to policing neighbourhoods.

Have you been a minority living in a neighborhood where “you don’t look like you belong”?

I had a house built in the most affluent county in the metro area and I make over twice the median income of the area - in GA - thanks to the fact that I work remotely for $BigTech.

My family constantly were looked at suspiciously. The county was an infamous “sun down town” as late as the 80s.

https://kaltura.uga.edu/media/t/1_958u30nt/86446941

It’s not as bad now as people have migrated in from the north and the county as grown. But those folks are still there.

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