For many reasons politicians and political leaders frequently choose to ignore the changing color of the leaves that tell them that the season as changed, and fall is coming; for some their supposed ignorance is rather an informed desire not to cause panic, as sometimes focusing on the problem can be the genesis to create it. Leaders dance a verbal tight rope, desiring to confirm their awareness of the problem and preparations to counteract the problems. Chief Bratton rightly said in December 2008, "The irony is that as we go into this economic downturn, we're expanding… which is exactly what you need to do when the economy turns bad." LAPD has made preparations for the crime opportunity environment that precedes crime waves by increasing law enforcement officer headcount and deployment in new substations. At a time when city governments and police chiefs around the country are reducing headcount due to budget shortfalls, LA's top cop has countered this trend and made a successful argument to city leaders that funding police operations is the key to safeguarding public order, supporting real estate prices, jobs for commercial enterprise, as crime and public fear of crime erode property values in crime plagued areas. Chief Bratton has confidence that his plan will work and that at least for Los Angeles, his preparations will mean that Los Angeles will not experience a crime wave during the recession, though he made no mention of others. Crime repelled in one area, may just be displaced to another jurisdication that is less prepared; rarely is displacement of crime 1 to 1, but displacement at some level, even 50% is generally agreed to occur for motivated offenders.As an economist thinking about crime in our present environment, criminal justice research shows that since the 1950s crime waves follow significantly sharp economic downturns with a time lag of approximately one year. There was a huge crime wave during the Great Depression, but that crime wave started earlier in the 1920s in concert with Prohibition; the economic misery of the Great Depression exacerbated the crime conditions.
Considering our current situation, while the top of the market was shown to be November 2007, and economists will market December 2007 as the start of the recession, the dramatic economic cliff-dive occurred on 9/15/08 with the Lehman Brothers collapse, and this latest downturn has created the backdraft of rapdily contracting credit, curtailed consumer and business spending, and preservation of capital with one consequence being rapidly rising unemployment.
If conditions of economic misery (unemployment, inflation expections, housing equity losses, and reduced household purchasing power) are not mullified (or made better) through stimulus or other government fiat pronouncement positively impacting the near term outlook, look for public reports of a crime wave this fall. This observation and others are contained in a new book that I have writtten (in technical editing presently to be published this spring) titled, Economic Misery and Crime Waves: the future history of the 2nd Great Depression and the crime wave that followed, and what to do about it.
The crime wave will not impact all geographies or markets equally. Further some enterprises will thrive during this period including security professionals, there are many ways to combat crime and reduce crime opportunity, and this will bring more opportunities in late 2009/2010 for security companies to profit from involvement in addressing this emerging issue. Look for consulting and security assessment demand to increase first, along with expansion of remotely monitored services and security systems integrations related at protecting assets. The man guarding market should see some short-term increase in demand for industries and crime targets of greatest vulnerability. Further, as the public clamors to protect capital by holding physical gold, look for increased demand and services to protect this asset.
