TV shows and movies have given the public these false impressions:
- Investigation is common.
- Investigation is affordable.
- Investigation is done by people with street smarts.
In reality:
- Almost all civil and criminal offenses are never investigated.
- Investigation is expensive.
- Investigation is done by bureaucrats.
Investigation is rare
Of all the civil offenses and crimes I’ve seen or heard about in real life, almost none were looked into by law enforcement or a regulator. As far as I know that’s also the experience of other people, whether they’re aware of it or not. This is even more true in every part of the world that isn’t well off like the United States.
In many parts of the world there has to be a dead body for the police to investigate. Sure they might show up, talk a bit, and take some notes, but nothing else will happen. The primary purpose of the police is to seize, protect, and restrain people, things, and buildings. The police don’t put clues together, by and large, and frankly don’t have the manpower or funding to do more.
Investigation is expensive
Investigations are rare because of the cost. Investigation is way too expensive. And that’s not because of the software, data, hardware, vehicles, or buildings required. No, it’s because of labor.
An investigation is an act of labor. People have to be paid salaries. They have to spend a ton of time talking to other people, reading documents, and looking at stuff. They need to put a bunch of thoughts together and run it up the chain. Then they’ll need to run their thoughts past judges, who are not known for unrigorous thinking. The cost of labor is the principal cost of investigation.
Investigation is not done by street-smart, scrappy people
Television shows show white-collar heroes in industries like espionage or law who have street smarts. Sorry but they basically don’t exist in my opinion.
In general people are either street smart or book smart, not both. This is partly because environments where book smarts are trained up or required hardly allow the iterated “exercise” of street smarts. These are primarily reflected in instincts, intuitions, and unarticulable forms of knowledge like rapid visual perception of for example body language.
Investigations are usually in part legalistic processes that require the verification and attempted falsification of knowledge through verbalization and sometimes heavy numbers work. That’s why the infamous, rarely lauded, intuition of a police officer has a limited role in the United States, whereas it is the cutting edge of the de facto legal system in most places across the globe.
Investigations are rare, expensive, and done by people who don’t have street smarts.
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