Prevention is deservedly mentioned first. Prosecution is not mentioned at all, though the last point could be read as a veiled rebuke of those who believe it's a primary goal.
"The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it."
There's plenty for police to do in preventing, protecting, and investigating, even if no prosecution occurs. The problem with US policing (and the associated justice/prison systems) is that these original principles have been completely replaced by a punitive and largely anti-community attitude or approach. And it doesn't work. Just as higher medical costs don't correlate very well with better health outcomes, intensive policing and imprisonment as they're practiced here do not lead to better public safety. Sometimes it's not enough to do more of what you're already doing, and a paradigm shift - by it's nature something that can feel very scary and might even produce worse results in the short term - is necessary.
Knowledge of prosecution is part of the prevention though - some would say it is the most important part, since police can’t physically be everywhere preventing crime.
If you just remove prosecution from the equation of policing, without making any other changes, you won’t be left with a better system but a worse one.
> Knowledge of prosecution is part of the prevention though
Agreed. To be clear, I think a blanket refusal to prosecute is a terrible idea. I was responding to a specific question - "why bother arresting" - in a context where arrest would have been easy and at least locally beneficial.
> If you just remove prosecution from the equation
Nowhere close to anything I suggested or implied. I was merely pointing out that successful prosecution is not the only or even primary purpose of policing. My interlocutor's implication that we can only continue policing with a focus on prosecution or give up on policing at all is a pernicious false dichotomy. We can police differently. Prosecution is a part of that, but only when alternatives have been tried and failed.
>Prosecution is a part of that, but only when alternatives have been tried and failed.
We don’t disagree, but so far humanity as a whole has been unable to find as efficient prevention method as prosecution. Indeed it would be a better society which could abandon the measure without negative repercussions.
It shouldn't be surprising that the DA’s office and police need to work together.