Last week, the Student Services Finance Committee faced a difficult decision regarding whether the SAFEwalk service was beneficial overall to the campus given its steep costs per walker. SAFEwalk is based on two central tenets: transportation and safety. In regard to its transportation services serving a large percentage of the student body, it does not perform well. SAFEride and the SAFEride bus have proven to be used much more widely. No one on SSFC was vouching for the service to be saved on the grounds of transportation efficiency.
The main premise in opposing cuts to the SAFEwalk program was the safety provision. Although SAFE officials, employees and supporters claim SAFE makes the campus safer, they lack clear evidence and statistics. It is hard for me, as a committee member, to assert their claims as fully valid.
That being said, the main argument to support the SAFEwalk service on the basis of safety is that safety is priceless and, if we could only save one woman from being assaulted or raped, it would be worth it. This illogical assertion needs to be addressed in full in order to make wise policy decisions.
Two specific tools are particularly valuable when evaluating a safety or security decision. The first is the precautionary principle, a tool often used in environmental economics to help determine what level of a specific pollutant is simultaneously safety conscious and economically viable. It is supposed to be used when there is a "reasonable suspicion of harm, lack of scientific certainty or consensus must not be used to postpone preventative action."
In applying it to SAFEwalk, the number of walkers needed in a specific area to be the "eyes and ears" of campus and prevent crime must be determined. The government or SAFE itself would then make the decision based on the crime level that keeps people and property relatively safe. Even by setting a precautionary principle in place, crime will still occur, and therefore costs and benefits should be calculated and used in the analysis.
The second tool is cost-benefit analysis, which weighs the cost and the benefits of an action while accounting for time through discounting. Applying the tool to security, one would need to weigh out the costs of patrol officers or security officials with the overhead of the program and then designate the benefits of prevention. The costs are easy to evaluate; the benefits are not.
In order to define SAFE's benefits, we would need to evaluate the benefits of stopping people from damaging property (possibly $200 for a street sign) or the benefits of preventing an assault, which clearly is very difficult. The fact is that if you do not put a value on stopping even an abhorrent act such as rape, you cannot evaluate the opportunity costs of the decision.
For instance, if we put all of society's taxes and stock into stopping rape/assault with security and technology, then we will have no money in this hypothetical "police state" to regulate environmental quality, provide social services, carry out government, fund national defense and do all the other things that make society run.
The argument I am trying to make is that in public policy, officials cannot view certain aspects of people's lives or even an individual's life itself as "priceless." With any policy, government needs to put a price on the costs and benefits of the service being provided.
Right now, actuaries have determined what your life is worth in the case you want to buy life insurance. Homeland Security officials quite possibly could be taking this actuarial data into account when determining where to place specific security measures. The quality of your health might be being evaluated at this moment by the Environmental Protection Agency staff when deciding air-quality laws and determining whether to place coal power plants on or near your place of residence.
If we cannot place high numbers of dollars on safety, government and public officials have no way to evaluate many important policy decisions. As a committee member of SSFC, one of the main points I had to consider is whether SAFEwalk as a safety service is worth more than $40 per walk — to the students. I had to evaluate whether this money could be better used elsewhere in the name of transportation and safety and had to determine whether SAFE indeed does make the campus a safer place. The committee made the decision, and I stand by it.
Tim Schulz ([email protected]) is an elected SSFC member.
