Crime has significant psychic costs - ready for a nice relaxed evening walk on a deserted street in a major city, the sort of thing that was a routine pleasure a decade ago? Probably not, which is why 60 percent of those surveyed say Britain is a worse place in which to live than it was five years ago....The economic consequences of Mr Brown, 'The Spectator', 19 JanuaryI'm pleased that somebody else feels the same way as me, but otherwise there's little to cheer about. The contrast with the private sector is compelling. No single corporation has all the answers to many of the problems they try to solve: how to market dogfood; how to maximize sales of laundry products, etc. But collectively they do a great job of satisfying our material needs. It's a Darwinian process to be sure: with many, many failed enterprises along the way. Now the UK has had decades of academic research into crime; countless strategies, initiatives, reorganisations, reports by government bodies and consultants and the rest. Why haven't they been translated into safe streets?
Part of the answer must be that the incentives aren't there. A police force that is too successful in reducing crime will see its funding cut. Neither are individual members of police forces paid in ways that are correlated to reductions in crime rates. It sounds very simplistic, but how else is one to explain the ingenuity that dramatically satisfies our needs as paying consumers and fails to satisfy our needs the 'psychic' human need to walk around in safety?
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