President Clinton, seeking to carry out his campaign pledge to fight crime, has taken the first step toward fulfilling his promise to add 100,000 police officers across the country.
He has announced his backing for a Democratic anti-crime measure that, to start the ball rolling, would budget $3.4 billion over five years. It would, he says, pay for 50,000 new officers.The Republicans have introduced a tough crime bill calling for substantially more police officers but not specifying any numbers.
The public, too, believes that more cops on the street is the answer to crime. But the sad truth is that hiring more officers will have no effect on the amount of crime in our society.
Criminologists find no relationship between the number of police officers and crime rates. They know that the best predictors of differences in crime rates, from year to year and between different places, are social and economic factors such as unemployment, education, income, gender, age and ethnic back-ground.
This does not mean the police should be laid off or sent on vacation. Studies of strikes and natural disasters indicate that, not surprisingly, crime does increase when the police are totally unavailable.
By the same token, saturating areas with police officers does deter criminal activity. As the police will admit, however, saturation is too costly to maintain for more than short periods, even in small areas.
Within practical limits, therefore, varying the number of police officers is unlikely to have any noticeable effect on crime.
Our society can't afford to hire enough cops to make a deterrent difference. The possibility of increasing police visibility by hiring more officers is governed by a 10-for-1 rule: To get one officer on the street at all times throughout a year, at least 10 have to be hired.
Only about 65 percent of the nation's police officers are assigned to uniformed patrol duties. New York's Police Department calculates its "street enforcement strength" - frontline patrol officers, detectives and narcotics investigators - at just under 10,000, about 36 percent of all officers.
But not all 65 percent are available all the time. They work different shifts, go on vacation, take sick leave and are sent for periodic training.
Generally, police departments estimate that it takes about 5.5 officers to provide one officer around the clock throughout the year. The New York department's figure is 5.73.
This means that of the 65 percent of police officers assigned to uniformed duties, only one for every 5.5 will be available at any moment. This amounts to 11.8 percent of total strength.
Add to this the fact that many uniformed patrol officers work away from the street, primarily in administrative duties, and that officers assigned to patrol are not always on the street, and it quickly becomes obvious that 10-for-1 is a conservative estimate of how many bodies are needed to create a single visible police officer.
To prevent crime, the police must become inventive, not simply more numerous. They should, for example, make better use of community policing, reduce the senior ranks and give precinct commanders greater autonomy.
Until the police show that they know how to use personnel in new ways that make a difference in preventing crime, increased hiring should be put on hold.