The optimal amount of crime is non-zero. We can "catch all criminals" quite easily, just install a totalitarian state panopticon where everybody is guilty by default and constantly surveilled by an omniscient intelligence apparatus, problem solved.

People are going to need to accept some amount of crime if they want to have some semblance of freedom and basic human dignity.

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

> Ubiquitous surveillance will end most crime

It doesn't even do that, is the worst part. So the trade is to give up all privacy, but low-level crime continues unchanged.

Anyone who has tried to get the police interested in a theft where you have clear HD video of the action and a clear view of their faces and/or license plate, has lived this experience.

That's a HUGE assumption about the ability of surveillance to succeed, and it goes against the evidence of the most surveillance-heavy states in the present and history. There are flaws in systems that go beyond collecting evidence, for example corruption can undermine any technical approach as we see in places like China where surveillance is omnipresent.

Hell if "total surveillance" was the secret to ending crime, prisons would paradise. The panopticon would have been a great success. In reality the only way to make it work is to assign people two-by-two to watch each other 24/7, and that only works if they're both honest, attentive, and incorruptible.