Lessons From The Economic Crisis Of 2008-2009
Crime will be an issue when the country reopens from the Coronavirus-COVID-19 pandemic. It’s already a concern for many cities.
Crime rose for some jurisdictions during the last recession.
Law enforcement and justice agencies will take substantial budget hits.
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of criminology and public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Aspiring drummer.
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Article
The Coronavirus-COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping the country. It has profound implications for crime and law enforcement-justice operations and budgets.
A reader asked if there were lessons from the past as to handling something similar. There are. The Police Executive Research Forum examined law enforcement’s response to the last economic crisis in 2008-2009. See the bottom of this article for a link and summation.
Obviously, the current pandemic is different with four out of five Americans under some form of lockdown (at the time of this writing) to prevent the spread of the disease.
But there are similarities. The economic crisis of 2008-2009 was the worst since the Great Depression with millions out of work and major hits to the economy. There was profound distress throughout the country and the world. People were uncertain as to the future. Gun sales increased dramatically.
What Can We Expect Based On The Last Recession?
Crime
Some law enforcement agencies will report increasing crime. Forty-four percent of respondents said they had experienced increases in crime; 55 percent said they had not, and 1 percent said they did not know.
The current (and popular) narrative is that crime is down throughout the United States and countries, but there are significant exceptions with violence or commercial burglaries rising, Coronavirus And Crime.
Most media reports predict that violence will increase when the lockdowns are lifted.
Incidents of domestic violence and child abuse, fraud, commercial, and auto theft seem to be currently rising.
Budgets
Based on the last recession, law enforcement and justice agencies will take substantial budget hits unless states and the federal government intervene. See Coronavirus And Crime for a list of current federal resources.
But the bottom line is that the economy is hurting badly with considerable unemployment. Tax collections are down substantially. It’s obvious that state and local governments are telling their agencies to begin the process of reducing their budgets. Virginia (per the Washington Post) instituted a budget freeze.
Staffing has to be on the table because the overwhelming percentage of any criminal justice agency’s budget is personnel. The danger is that we have three out of four major sources of information on crime in agreement that violence increased since 2015. Property crime decreased, Crime in America.
The other concern is that recruitment and retention for law enforcement agencies have decreased dramatically, Running Out Of Cops. There is a 63 percent decrease in recruitment due to the massive negative publicity regarding police use of force. Recruitment and retention are even harder for correctional systems.
Police and justice agencies will take budget hits and what’s below will probably be a guide to what’s coming, or what’s already here.
As to state budgets, the U.S. Census Bureau reported April 15 that retail sales fell a seasonally adjusted 8.7% in March from February, the largest monthly decline on record. Such a sharp drop in consumer spending poses problems for states and their budget writers because general sales taxes raise nearly one-third of their general tax revenues, according to the latest census survey figures, Pew.
Conclusions
Crime will be an issue, especially as the country reopens. Violence will return. It’s inevitable.
Criminality will have major implications for state and local economies. No one will invest in areas or communities with perceived violent crime problems.
Law enforcement and justice agencies will assume budget cuts, also inevitable. Those reductions will have implications for agencies dealing with dramatically less recruitment and retention and law enforcement’s ability to deal with crime and public uncertainty.
Current tactics as to a soft enforcement posture to keep people out of a virus-compromised judicial and correctional system may have to be extended.
It’s not going to be business as usual.
Previous Coronavirus-COVID-19 Articles
Coronavirus And Crime-Everyone Now Loves Cops
Coronavirus And Crime: 62 Police Officers Dead-Violence And Burglaries Up In Some Cities
Coronavirus-Violence May Increase When Criminals Don’t Get Their Drugs
Coronavirus Updates-Coughing On Cops-Interrupted Drugs-Testing Meth-Don’t Commit Crime-Help From DOJ
Coronavirus And Crime-Looting-Drug Crisis-Foreign Prisons Erupting
Coronavirus-Violence And Crime Will Undoubtedly Return
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The Coronavirus, Crime And Law Enforcement Responses
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See More
See more articles on crime and justice at Crime in America.
Most Dangerous Cities/States/Countries at Most Dangerous Cities.
US Crime Rates at Nationwide Crime Rates.
National Offender Recidivism Rates at Offender Recidivism.
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Police Executive Research Forum Report- May 2009
The economic crisis of 2008–09 continues to be one of the biggest challenges to face local and state police agencies in many years. Every day, PERF hears of new developments stemming from the poor economy. Budget cuts affecting everything from hiring and training to technology and overtime.
Increases in certain types of crime, especially opportunistic property crimes. Increased reports of domestic violence. Tragic incidents in which unbalanced individuals become stressed to the breaking point and kill themselves after killing all their family members.
Apparent increases in “suicide by police.” Increased sales of firearms that are attributed to people’s fears about the economy. Increased concern about whether economic stresses are contributing to a rash of killings of police officers. These changes are forcing police executives to look at all of their operations and strategies, through a new prism of cutbacks in resources.
And elected officials are not being shy about imposing their ideas about how to reduce spending on their police services. At least one city is considering hiring less-expensive private armed guards to bolster its police force. In another city, a candidate for mayor called for training garbage collectors and other city workers to detect and report suspicious activity to police.
At the same time, some leaders are calling for police to be assertive in pointing out that spending on police should be considered an investment, not an expense, because we in policing have learned over the last few decades that “cops count”—that police can in fact reduce crime rates, which results in enormous economic savings, not to mention reducing the psychological trauma that accompanies every victimization.
PERF will continue to focus on all aspects of the economic crisis as it affects policing. This issue has wide and deep implications not only for the next year or two, but also as a long-term trend in policing. The enormous successes in crime reduction realized in the mid- to late-1990s and early part of the 21st Century must not be lost due to an economic crisis. It will require new kinds of initiative by police executives to ensure that the next decade is not one of retrenchment, but instead becomes an era when police prove that they can get the job done in spite of economic troubles.
PERF first became aware in the summer of 2008 that the national economic crisis was beginning to have a negative impact on police budgets. PERF was able to take a quick snapshot of the dimensions of the problem in July 2008, by including several questions about the economy in a previously planned survey of police agencies.
That survey showed that 39 percent of responding agencies had already experienced a decrease in their operating budgets. In December 2008, PERF followed up with a new survey focusing entirely on how the economic recession was affecting police department budgets and on whether local police were noticing increases in crime or changes in crime patterns that they believed could be attributed to the economy.
The new survey showed that the situation was deteriorating rapidly; 63 percent of the responding police agencies said they were preparing plans for an overall cut in their total funding for the next fiscal year. And in a large majority of cases, the police officials indicated that they were not merely making contingency plans for budget cuts “just in case”; of those who said they are planning cuts, 88 percent said they have already been told to expect cuts by their mayor, city council, or other governing authority.
On average, the responding agencies said they are planning a cut of 6.24 percent in their overall funding level.
Even as police officials said they were planning how they would implement budget cuts for the next fiscal year, the survey showed that many already had trimmed funding in various areas. Specifically: Overtime: 62 percent said they had already cut overtime spending.
PERF pointed out that this is more significant than it might appear to the layman, because police departments often use overtime to meet their minimum staffing levels. (In fact, 52 percent of the agencies responding to PERF’s survey said they “regularly rely on overtime to meet minimum safe staffing.”)
Overtime also is often used as a method of temporarily increasing the number of officers on patrol, so police can respond to a crime spike in a certain neighborhood or handle a major public event without incurring the more permanent expense of hiring additional officers.
Hiring Freezes: 53 percent of responding agencies said they already had implemented a hiring freeze for non-sworn personnel, and 27 percent said they have implemented a freeze for sworn positions.
Increasing Fees: 52 percent said they were considering increasing fees for police services.
Technology: 49 percent of the responding agencies said they had already cut back or eliminated plans to acquire technology.
Training: 47 percent of the police agencies said they had already reduced or discontinued various types of officer training. (Of these, 84 percent mentioned specialty training; 67 percent career development training; 15 percent proficiency training; and 14 percent in-service training.)
Recruits: 34 percent said they had discontinued, reduced in size, or delayed classes for new police recruits.
Take-Home Cars: 29 percent of departments had discontinued or reduced the use of take-home cars for officers.
Attrition: 24 percent of agencies said they were already reducing police employment levels through attrition.
Layoffs and Furloughs: 12 percent said they were considering laying off police employees or forcing retirements. Furthermore, 10 percent said they had already used unpaid furloughs of employees to reduce spending, and 7 percent said they had already laid off officers or forced retirements during the past year.
The cuts that had already been made were especially significant in light of the fact that 52 percent of the responding agencies reported that they operate on a fiscal year that begins on July 1. That suggested that at the time of the survey, in December 2008, most of the responding departments were operating on funding that their elected officials had approved back in the spring or early summer of 2008, months before the economic crisis hit.
And yet in several major categories—overtime, technology, and training—roughly half or more of all departments said they had already implemented cuts. “It wasn’t until September and October of 2008 that we started reading all the headlines about Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia.
” PERF said in its press statement. “If police departments are already tightening their belts everywhere we look, it’s quite sobering to think about how things will look six months from now, when police departments enter their first real year of being hit with the crisis.”
HOW POLICE AGENCIES ARE PLANNING TO APPORTION BUDGET CUTS
The survey revealed further signs of trouble in questions about how chiefs were planning to apportion their upcoming budget cuts among various operations or functions. As seen in the chart on the following page, the survey showed the strongest level of agreement (4.39 on a scale of 1 to 5) with the statement, “Sworn officer positions should be the last thing cut in the budget.”
Respondents generally said they would not cut sworn positions even to maintain critical elements of their training, equipment, or technology budgets. And yet, as seen in the pie chart on page 3, when survey respondents were asked how they were planning to apportion cuts in their upcoming budgets, they indicated on average that 31 percent of the dollar cuts would come out of funding for sworn personnel.
Another 15 percent would come out of funding for civilian personnel, and 12 percent would come out of overtime funding.
In other words, for every dollar that police departments are planning to cut from their total budgets, 58 cents will come out of personnel—sworn, civilian, or overtime funding.
Thus, it is apparent that even though most police chiefs believe that their last resort should be cutting sworn personnel, the economic crisis is so severe that many chiefs are finding it difficult or impossible to avoid cutting sworn officers. The reason for this is that personnel costs account for the large majority of a police department budget, typically at least 80 percent of total funding, and as high as 95 percent or more in some departments, said PERF Vice President Charlie T. Deane, chief in Prince William County, Va. “So it is not surprising that we are already seeing many departments resorting to hiring freezes and reducing their size through attrition,” Chief Deane said. “And if the economic crisis continues, we will see more departments looking at layoffs.”
REORGANIZING POLICE DEPARTMENTS TO SAVE MONEY
The survey asked police executives about any plans they are making for reorganizing their departments in order to save money: Shifting to Civilian Employees: 43 percent said they were planning to rely to a greater extent on less-costly civilian employees, rather than sworn officers.
Calls for Service: 36 percent said they were planning ways of discontinuing or delaying the police response to certain types of calls for service (such as encouraging residents to file reports about minor crimes online, rather than in-person to an officer).
Shutting Down Special Units: 29 percent said they were planning to discontinue special units, such as street crimes units, narcotics task forces, community policing units, and so on.
Cutting Public Access Hours: 16 percent said they were planning to reduce public access hours at district stations.
Contracting Work Out: 15 percent said they were planning to contract out for services such as crime scene processing or fee collection. Closing District Stations: 10 percent said they were planning to close or consolidate district stations
“The plans to discontinue special units are especially disconcerting,” Chief Timoney said, “because in many cities, it is these special units that have proved effective in reducing violent crime rates— for example, by focusing intensive police resources on crime ‘hot spots.’ ” PERF pointed out that when police departments saw increases in violent crime in 2005 and 2006, they were able to respond quickly by using overtime to flood crime hot spots with additional patrol and using special units. Many police chiefs believe that it was those tactics that helped to bring crime back down again in 2007 and the first half of 2008. The threat posed by the economic crisis is that because of police budget cuts, many departments will no longer have these options available to keep crime and violence down, PERF indicated.
CHANGES IN CRIME PATTERNS DUE TO THE ECONOMY
PERF’s December 2008 survey also asked police officials whether their jurisdiction had experienced increases in crime levels in recent months that they believed could be attributed substantially to changes in the economy and/or their police budgets.
Overall, 44 percent of respondents said they had experienced such increases in crime; 55 percent said they had not; and 1 percent said they did not know.
Of the responding agencies who said they had experienced increases in crime attributable to the economy:
• 39 percent said they have seen an increase in robberies.
• 32 percent said they have seen increases in burglaries, such as incidents in which appliances and other equipment are taken from vacant homes.
• 40 percent said they have seen increases in thefts, such as thefts of GPS devices from cars and other “opportunistic” crimes.
Other types of crime mentioned by police agencies as having increased due to economic conditions included: domestic violence; home invasions; carjackings and auto thefts; thefts of metal; and shoplifting.
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