Another Look At Police Funding and Crime in California

Yesterday I showed you the surprisingly high differences between police spending in various big cities in California. Here’s a different look at the same thing:

Spending on police does increase along with violent crime rates, but not by a lot. Los Angeles, for example, spends twice as much as Modesto to achieve about the same violent crime rate.

I wouldn’t try to draw any conclusions from this. It’s just a way of showing that police funding is surprisingly variable even when it achieves essentially the same results.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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