We arrested more people for 30 years and crime went down. There is loads of data that more police in the right places deter crime. All my LEO friends know who that are arresting because they arrest the same people over and over. Crime is driven by a small number of bad actors.
I remember what ten years ago in San Francisco the cops found a guy shot to death in Bayview. Cops suspicion was he broke into the wrong car and a gang member shot him.
Guy had been arrested over a hundred times for breaking into cars in the previous couple of years. So this guy was breaking into several cars a day every day for years and only stopped when someone shot him.
I definitely feel that old school habitual criminal laws were over strict and subject to abuse. But not having them at all is also bad.
