STUDENT OPINION: Defunding the LAPD Will Lower Crime

By Wen Chiang

LOS ANGELES — Divesting funds from LAPD and placing them into community-based initiatives will be more cost-effective at reducing crime than the police would be. The current massively overinflated budget of the LAPD is overkill, and has diminishing returns on actually addressing crime. Police do not reduce crime—they punish it. We need more initiatives that systemically prevent crime if we want to see progress.

This is not a comprehensive plan nor a budget proposal. This is merely an argument in favor of defunding the police, showing how doing so wisely and reallocating those funds in key locations can be effective at reducing crime. By reinvesting police funds into programs that address issues of substance abuse, mental health and mental illness—all of which are massively correlated with crime—tangible reductions in crime can be seen in coming years. Reductions in crime inherently mean that there is a lower demand for police presence, which justifies the divested funds and reallocation of county money.

In order to reduce crime, it is important to understand why people commit crime. Major factors correlated with crime tend to be mental illness and substance abuse. Almost 60 percent of all prison inmates deal with substance abuse disorders. Over half of all prison inmates deal with mental health problems. Addressing all these problems are fundamental in adequately reducing crime.

One of the major ways the police funds could be divested with potential success is by opening up more treatment centers to address drug problems. Drug disorders exacerbate many problems with crime by helping push violent behavior and financial need. 

According to an article published by the Brookings Institute, “Each additional [substance abuse] treatment facility in a county reduces the social costs of crime in that county by $4.2 million per year. Annual costs of treatment in a facility are approximately $1.1 million, so the benefits far exceed the costs.”

However, the article also notes that it is “not in my backyard” (also known as “NIMBY”) attitudes that are largely stalling progress towards the creation of these facilities. But with major cries for “defunding the police” from many BLM advocates, these attitudes may change.

Mental illness is another common correlate of criminality that has the potential to reduce crime if addressed. The prison population has a percentage of mental illness in its population that is vastly greater than that of the general public. Many of the people with mental health problems in the prison system receive treatment that massively undeserves their needs. 

In a study sampling mental health treatment in prison populations they found: “At the time of admission, 18% of each sample were taking medication for a mental health condition (this was consistent across state and federal facilities). Among those who previously received medication, 52% of those inmates in federal prison (and 42% in state prisons) received medication during their current sentence. … between 40% and 50% of inmates taking medication for a mental health condition at admission did not receive medication in prison.”

Prison populations are massively under-medicated, and are not receiving the treatment needed to make progress. This could potentially play into the aspects of recidivism and reoffense. It is also not an unreasonable assumption that addressing the problems of mental health outside of the prison system can help prevent crime caused by people who may feel they have no other option because they cannot get help. 

For example, a report on the correlation between mental health access and crime found: “In particular, ten additional [mental health care physician] offices in a county leads to 0.9 fewer violent crimes per 10,000 residents (2%) and 0.8 fewer non-violent crimes per 10,000 residents (0.2%). Interestingly, these findings suggest that violent crime is more responsive to better local access to mental healthcare than non-violent crime.”

Violent crime especially seems to be targeted with the additions of mental health facilities. Considering that that is the type that has the most costly effects, the reductions in such could potentially be massive. 

LAPD receives close to half of the city’s yearly budget, preventing many of these solutions from being implemented. These policies have evidence to prove that their implementation could help reduce crime. Defunding the police to instead fund these programs can pay massive dividends in the long term.

Wen Chiang is a senior at Academy of the Canyons Middle College High School from Santa Clarita.

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