The idea of proactively eliminating the causes of crime rather than reactively responding after crime has been committed is a very attractive one. To implement it and either eliminate the police or cut police departments by half as is being advocated will be more difficult. To eliminate the causes for crime makes two key assumptions. One is that we actually know the causes of crime, and two that the remedies for those causes that are proposed will actually work.
There are many different kinds of crime. Some are crimes of economic desperation born out of poverty. Eliminate poverty and presumably those crimes would go away. I have no idea what kind of percentage of crimes would come under that category. But there are many other crimes. Some are crimes not of desperation but of greed. It's not that the person is in desperate need but that the person is greedy for more and resorts to crime to get that more. I doubt that we can come up with a plan that would result in everybody getting as much as they want.
Eliminating poverty has been a goal of government since the 30s and the 60s. Much effort, expertise, and dollars has been spent on the effort and poverty is still with us. Even if we take it slower and propose a five year plan for eliminating the police or greatly reducing it, it would take an extreme optimist to assume that we can solve poverty and thus eliminate poverty driven crime in the next five years. The roots of poverty are many which indicates that solving poverty is not a simple solution. Simply replacing capitalism with some form of socialism or its cousin communism doesn't solve poverty. Mass starvation and the spread of poverty has followed the implementation of socialistic economies and government control in a number of large countries where it has been tried.
Poverty driven crime is only one segment of crime, although it is likely a large component of crime. Can we also readily solve the causes of crime because of mental illness, domestic abuse, anger management, interpersonal disputes, and the like? We've been working on those causes of crime for decades, centuries, millennia and they are still with us. While economic need is a major source of crime, other needs can also come into play. The greed for power over others, domination motivates some, the desire for otherwise unobtainable luxury, sexual appetites, and more. Can we realistically expect the idealists who want to eliminate police by solving the causes for crime to come up with workable programs to eliminate all of that?
Certainly, policing can and should be improved. Having mental health professionals to respond to mental health issues rather than, or in addition to, the police sounds like a very good idea. I think that we really need to rethink the militarization of the police as well as the SWAT utilization. We also need to look at the roots of poverty and work on that. Some of these roots, seems to me, are poor educational opportunities, the need to teach children the skills that will assist them in getting and holding jobs. Employment opportunities need to be increased.
But whether we call it theologically original sin, or some secular equivalent, it needs to be recognized that people are imperfect and not perfectible. Everyone is capable of doing bad things, everyone will on occasion do what they should not, and some are simply going to be bad dudes. We can reduce the causes of crime, but not eliminate them, because people are not perfectible.
