Crime is a very difficult problem for policymakers specifically to tackle - in large part because the major policy interventions to fight it have already been made. Policymaking at its core involves making laws and allocating funding to have those laws enforced - both of these functions have been mostly accomplished in terms of crime. Policymakers cannot make murder or armed robbery "more illegal" - those crimes have long been crimes. And Philadelphia's police department is funded by policymakers - after remaining flat from 2006-2013, Philadelphia's police budget has risen by 20% over the last 10 years

Despite this difficulty, citizens still demand that their policymakers address the problem of crime. The traditional approaches involve simply trying to do the impossible and "make crime more illegal" - usually by increasing sentencing, mandatory minimums, three strike rules, and similar issues that have proven to not be particularly effective in the past. So far this election cycle, candidates have not staked out many concrete policies regarding crime, and if they have, they've been pretty minor

Instead, I want to propose a (non exhaustive) list of policy interventions that policymakers could propose and enact. Most of these things can be done through normal procedures, though a few of them would be subject to union approval. I'm going to divide my suggestions into 3 segments: Reducing Police Burdens, Growing Police Investigative Capacity, and Bringing in Federal Assistance

Reducing Police Burdens

Despite the increase in funding over the past decade, the "crime-load" of Philadelphia's PD has significantly increased over the past decade. Yet despite that, police numbers are down, and the staffing crisis is only going to get worse as many officers have filed their intention to retire in the near future. While the broader crisis of civil service and public sector hiring in general also needs policy interventions, a fix we can make is to simply take things off the police's plate, freeing up personnel for more pressing matters. Some ways we can do this:

1. Automate traffic enforcement: Did you know that for a ticket to be issued by a red light or speeding camera, a police officer must review the footage? Both an increase in red light and speeding cameras, and turning over the process of review to a non-police agency (whatever your views on the PPA, it cannot be denied that they are effective), will free up police personnel and time for more important and specialist work

2. Replace some kinds of 911 calls with social worker responses: A common complaint I've seen and heard police make is that the crisis particularly in Kensington is both using up significant police resources, and leading to demoralization among the police department. While many issues there, and in other parts of the city, certainly need police intervention, in many cases social workers who are trained to address that kind of issue would be better. Social workers also suffer from hiring difficulties, so this is not the pancea that many who advocate for this policy portray it as, but this policy would help free up police manpower, reduce police shootings, and improve police morale

3. Help neighborhood RCOs and business associations contract with outside security companies: This is probably my most controversial proposal here, and it's not an ideal one - I strongly support building more government state capacity rather than outsourcing government functions to private organizations. But the crisis we find ourselves in is acute and while we do longer term work to build state capacity, solutions are needed now. Some RCOs and business organizations, like the Center City Business District or well resourced neighborhoods like Fishtown and Northern Liberties, can afford to contract private companies for things like security guards, patrols, street cleaning. These guards can handle or deter significant amounts of the low level public disorder that creates the conditions for more public disorder without needing to waste police time on minor quality of life issues. But many neighborhoods cannot afford this - the city should provide funding to help these organizations and areas with hiring security, trash collection, etc until the city can get its shit together to do it themselves

Growing Police Investigative Capacity

While the city's PD is short officers across the board, the crisis is particularly acute in terms of investigative resources. The city's detective force is simply drowning in caseloads, and this effectively means that crimes that are less serious, or happen in areas or to people that don't get much media attention, are given minimal investigative resources. Simply put, we need more police whose job it is specifically to investigate crimes. Murders need to be solved, but also non fatal shootings, robberies, property crime, etc. The current arrest rate for murders is shameful, and with how low the arrest rates for non-fatal shootings and property crimes are, they might as well not be illegal in Philadelphia

1. Hire and promote more detectives - this is a fairly simple proposal, but is crucial. There simply needs to be more people working as detectives than is the case today. With more detectives each will have a smaller case load and can devote more time to solving crimes

2. Create non-traditional paths for detective hiring - currently, to be eligible to be promoted to detective a police officer must work as a patrol officer for a year (in reality, several years at minimum) before they can be considered for a detective role. While there is certainly some overlap, the skill set needed to be a patrol officer is very different than that needed for detectives. We accept that many parts of the criminal justice system can be professionalized - coroners, medical examiners, etc can all be professionally trained in universities. Why not detectives too? I know several people who had intense interests in criminal justice and who would have loved to be detectives, but became lawyers instead because they did not want to spend years as a patrol officer. Philadelphia should open its detective hiring ranks to university graduates and people with relevant skill sets and waive the requirement that detectives first serve as patrol officers. Notably this is how federal agencies like the FBI recruit

Bringing in Federal Assistance

Simply put, the violence problem is clearly overwhelming the resources of local governments, both here in Philadelphia and nation-wide. While there are existing Federal task forces addressing things like violence and organized crime in Philadelphia and most other major cities, as they exist these forces clearly do not have the manpower and resources needed to make a significant contribution. An additional advantage to federal resources would be to cut through our city's political fight between the police and DA's office - the FBI would not be affected by the work slowdown that many accuse the police of being on, and federal charges would not be brought by the DA's office

Federal assistance can be done both by fiat, with the Biden White House simply directing the Justice Department to devote more resources to these existing structures, and in Congress where the government could allocate more funding to expand these existing operations and create new ones. These would also be smart political moves to make - Republicans have been making electoral hay out of the crime issue (even as they have no actual proposals to deal with the problem, and crime is just as bad of an issue in Republican controlled jurisdictions), and dramatic federal action surging manpower and support to combat violent crime in local areas could help politically