Alternatives to Police - Do They Work?
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Medellín Cartel
16 min read
Understanding Medellín's history with organized crime provides essential context for why the city developed alternative security agencies and why 'combo' street gangs emerged to fill governance gaps
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Randomized controlled trial
16 min read
The article hinges on this experimental methodology being applied to social policy, which is rare - understanding the gold standard of research design helps readers appreciate why this study's findings are significant
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Broken windows theory
15 min read
The intervention's focus on street lights, garbage pickup, and visible disorder directly relates to this influential criminology theory about how environmental signals affect crime rates
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The debate around improving safety in cities often revolves around whether this means deploying more police or not. In New York City, the recent mayoral election had certain candidates promise an increase in police patrols, while another candidate proposed the creation of a non-police unit to deal with certain issue (homelessness and mental health).
But do these non-police approaches work? A recent paper by Blattman, Duncan, Lessing and Tobon (2024) (“BDLT”) tackles this issue with a fascinating research design and find somewhat surprising answers!
The Experiment
Background
BDLT conducted an experiment in Medellin, Colombia to study the impact of increasing civilian and government intervention on the levels of crime and governance. Many cities around the world have been attempting to deal with disorder and crime, preferably without having to resort to weapons. However, often it is the police who are the first responders to a range of everyday disputes including domestic violence, homelessness, regulatory breaches, or other civil disputes.
In Colombia, the police are a national institution – that is local governments and mayors have limited control over the police, especially regarding staffing levels, police training, and police guidelines. Thus, large cities such as Medellin, have created their own ‘alternative’ security agencies with neighborhood-level government staff dealing with local minor problems. These security agencies are controlled by the local government and deal with street disorder, domestic violence, and public space regulation. In Medellin, the agency is called the Secretariat of Security and has roughly 1 employee per 1,000 residents. In contrast, the police staffing level in Medellin is approximately 2.7 police officers per 1,000 residents.
Although Medellin is a relatively wealthy city, with a well developed bureaucracy, it suffers, just like many cities around the world, from a street gang problem. These street gangs, called ‘combos’, do not only undertake illegal activities but also provide a variety of basic services for the local community such as security, dispute resolution,
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