By Noah Smith-Drelich

For all the discussion of defunding the police, far less attention has been given to how the police are funded. This Article shines a light on the wide range of sources, public and private, from which police draw their funding. This examination complicates the widely accepted notion of police as locally controlled and wholly public entities. Even when police policy-making remains ostensibly in local hands, funding from nonlocal or nonpublic sources will distort the incentives underlying policing decisions. This Article examines the significant influence of external funding on the police, articulating the role that the source of police funding plays in police control and accountability. I conclude by proposing two novel reforms, each of which could be adopted under current law. First, the distorting effects of outside funding could be countered by adopting a more dynamic remedial approach in suits for constitutional wrongdoing. Second, these distorting effects could be reduced or even eliminated entirely by barring local agencies and departments from accepting outside funding.

Ohio State Law Journal, Vol. 84:3, 2023. 55p.

By Charles Fain Lehman

In the wake of the death of George Floyd and the summer of protests and riots that followed, left-wing activists and politicians have called not simply for reforms to policing, but for its abolition. In order to eliminate the possibility of wrongful killing of civilians, these advocates say, we should defund police departments, reroute their budgets to social services, and replace beat cops with unarmed civilian alternatives wherever possible. In the first half of this brief, I outline why such proposals would be a disaster for public safety. In short, they:

• Have little basis in evidence;

• Would increase the risk posed to civilian employees;

• Would diminish the crime-reduction benefits of current police work; and

• Would have little impact on the size, and therefore effect, of social welfare spending.

While replacing the police is a misguided idea, that does not mean that lawmakers should dismiss altogether the idea of nonpolice crime-fighting tools. Indeed, there are several evidence-based, effective means to mitigate crime through channels other than more police work. These complementary tools can help relieve stress on overtaxed and understaffed police forces. In the second half of this report, I lay out the evidence behind three options:

• Reducing crime through changes to the built environment, such as cleaning up vacant lots and green public spaces;

• Using “nonpolice guardians,” such as neighborhood watches and CCTV cameras, to extend the police’s reach;

• Targeting problematic alcohol use, a major cause of crime.

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2021. 20p.

By Nicole Gelinas

  Since mid-2020, government spending on American police departments has come under intense scrutiny nationwide. The New York Police Department (NYPD) is no exception. Leftwing critics supporting the “defund the police” movement charge that spending on police is crowding out necessary spending on civilian agencies that provide education, housing, health care, and social services. Even moderate Democrats and supposedly neutral news outlets accept the premise that police spending is either too high, relative to the rest of the city budget, or, at minimum, keeping up with the rest of the city budget. What’s missing from the “defund” argument and even from news sources is context. How large is the NYPD budget, relative to the overall city budget? How has spending on policing changed over the years and decades, relative to the entire budget? How large is uniformed-police staffing, relative to the overall city workforce? To answer these questions, this paper analyzes four decades of New York City police spending, from the recovery after the 1970s fiscal crisis through the pandemic years of the early 2020s. This paper puts spending and officer headcount in the context of the overall budget. The paper finds that operational spending on the uniformed NYPD, contrary to conventional wisdom, has shrunk substantially as a share of the city budget since the early 1980s, both in terms of spending and the size of the uniformed-officer workforce.

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2023. 13p.

By Zach Goldberg

  After the killing of George Floyd in May 2020, a surprising number of Democrats embraced calls to “defund” the police. According to data from the 2020 Cooperative Election Survey, 35.4% of Democrats expressed support for reducing spending on law enforcement. Even as violent crime surged across the country, many Democrats remained supportive of defunding, which was supposedly necessary to achieve racial justice and equity. But support for defunding and depolicing is actually higher among white (and Asian) Democrats than among black and Hispanic Democrats. Relatively stronger support among the former, more affluent groups has led some to suggest that these attitudes are “luxury beliefs” that the privileged can afford to adopt to signal their virtue because they do not have to suffer the consequences. The luxury beliefs thesis thus suggests that socioeconomic status (SES) drives support for depolicing. But it is also possible that a genuine moral-political ideology, not affluence, plays an important role. This report is an attempt to empirically test the luxury beliefs hypothesis. It ultimately finds support for both the SES and ideology-centered accounts.

New York: Manhattan Institute, 2022. 57p.

By Michael J. D. Vermeer, Dulani Woods, Brian A. Jackson

Recent nationwide protests against police use of force and perceptions of systemic racism in law enforcement in the United States have sparked renewed conversation about problems in the U.S. criminal justice system. Much of this conversation has been focused on the idea of "defunding the police." In this Perspective, the authors describe police leaders' and practitioners' views on defunding the police — that is, budgeting less money for police and more for other public safety strategies — and explain why revisiting the role of law enforcement in society could have broader appeal than some think. To do this, the authors draw on experience in workshops held over the past seven years by the Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative. In these workshops, police leaders and practitioners have voiced frustration with being the default party that is expected to respond to many complex social problems, such as homelessness, substance use, and mental health crises. Practitioners argue that nonenforcement strategies are often more effective than policing in solving many of these problems. Therefore, the authors suggest that there might be significant law enforcement support for some "defunding" strategies — as long as these efforts relieve some of the unrealistic expectations on police. The authors also describe current police functions that could be reassigned to other community partners, discuss factors that communities must consider if they choose to reallocate police functions, and note evidence of broader support for such reforms in the general population.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2020. 20p.