How Defunding the Police Defunded the Economy

Soft-on-crime policies have cost lives and caused billions of dollars of economic devastation.

Progressive defunding of the police has indisputably led not just to lost lives but also to economic devastation in the cities that attempted it.

Murders increased by 39 percent nationwide, from 16,425 in 2019 to 22,900 in 2021, and remain far above pre–“defund the police” movement levels. But the cost of crime isn’t just felt in lives lost, although that is its most tragic impact. Cities that defunded the police have also been economically devastated.

Consider cellphone data, collected by the University of Toronto...