What would have happened if the police had not arrived on time?
Answers
Explanation:
I shall start with an obvious statement. I think that wishing to have a society without a form of policing is a complete non-starter.
However, it is always best to frame one’s views to show why you believe something. Perhaps the best way is to pose this as a thought experiment and see what comes out rather than just assume it will all fall apart or for that matter be a lot better.
Let’s take an average community and imagine it has no police cover at all, no local police, no state police and has no access to neighbouring police forces. Basically self-contained.
Let’s put some numbers on this community, It has a town about 50,000 strong and a few outlying villages. It has a rail station and reasonable road connections in and out, it has a retail area or two, some light industrial zoning, several large housing estates as well as other developed housing, and a few schools and some health infrastructure. It has a number of bars and some minor nightlife – but will probably never make it onto the main entertainment circuit. I hope this conjures up any one of hundreds of potential townships.
Now, how do you deal with criminality within that community. We can be generous and say that no criminals actually come in from outside – although in reality the place would be flooded with them.
You have ongoing petty theft – shoplifting, break-ins to sheds, garages and cars, you have opportunistic theft from bags and purses. You have assaults due to drunkenness, domestic violence (always a much larger problem then figures suggest), some child on child bullying/violence in the schools, there is drug usage, general public disorder that everywhere gets resulting in loud groups, aggression played out in fights, spitting, urinating in public, graffiti and other general wanton damage.
You also have a certain level of mental illness in the town, self-harming, suicide attempts and all the aspects that go with this such as homelessness, prostitution, extortion and alcohol abuse (the mentally ill are very vulnerable to these things).
Missing persons are an everyday occurrence, whether it is just the teenager that has an argument with parents, a child in care that decamps from the care home, dementia patients that disappear from home or hospital or retirement complex. All the way through to a toddler that is quietly abducted (more of that further on).
Then you have non-crime issues – littering, noise, begging in the street, unlicensed trading.
Then there are traffic issues – accident blackspots, fast roads, dangerous crossing points (often near schools), selfish parking, arrogant driving, drinking and driving. Driving cars that rightfully should be in a scrapyard or are horrendously polluting