If the certainty of being caught matters, law enforcement becomes essential for deterrence. The idea is that people think twice about committing crimes when police are visible in a community. So hiring more officers or simply making police officers more visible in communities can reduce crime.64 The latter is referred to as the sentinel effect: police presence serves as a sentinel function that deters and prevents crime by making the chances of apprehension extremely high.65 Studies find that investing in police is a much more efficient way to deter crime than investing in the prison system.66
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