Justice Reinvestment in Bourke
Tuan Dat Huynh
THE MODEL

Underlying assumptions:

  •      Police Force has a negative relationship with committed crime (criminals) and has a positive relationship with Juvenile Detention.
  •      Community Investment has a negative relationship with committed crime.
  •      Family – Police relations is negatively related to domestic violence rate, which has positive relationship with committed crime.
  •      Only the youth are law-breaking citizens (as this model mainly focuses on this population).   
  •      Coefficients are chosen arbitrarily. We may need more real data and research to determine the appropriate ones.

Constants:  

  • It took six months for Community Investment (which includes soccer team, trade-skills class and driving class) and Family – Police Relations to work.
  • Juvenile detention length is also 6 months.

Things to note:

  •      Youth in Bourke committed crime mainly because of the influence from high domestic violence rate, low police force rate (police investment), as well as low community investment rate. The figure was used to calculate the number of youth committing crime is the average of these three rates.
  •      Those violent families were detected by the Police Force, but then supervised by the responsible team, therefore reduce bad effects on the youths who have been suffering from that and finally reduce the likelihood of committing crimes.
  •      Community Investment in forming soccer team, trade-skills classes and driving classes moved a portion of returning criminals (the ones not got caught) to community engagement, therefore reduce the chances of committing crimes of these individuals.
  •      Maximizing the Police Force rate is probably the best way to reduce crime in short-term, but not likely in long-term because detention facilities cost much of the budget and it is not going to benefit the community. Since it is assumed that the total budget for justice reinvestment campaign in Burke is 50 units, an initial setting of 10, 25 and 15 units for Police Force, Community Investment and Family-Police Relations respectively is recommended.

Initial values:

Youth in town: 1200.

Criminals: 100.

Juvenile Detention: 100.

Violent families: 300                      

Detected violent families: 100.