£154,000

[MintTrav]

Without any knowledge of what theyre actually working on Id be shocked if the police were truely at a stage where they are inches away from solving the case that they need funds for 6 months to get it done.  From the sounds of it, it seems pretty desperate, like theyve still got some avenues of enquiry but nothing concrete.  If they were so close to solving it then surely they would make a statement to that effect to raise public interest.

Agree with the point made earlier too, after this long Id just be shocked if she is still alive.  Especially with the big campaign to find her, the culprit would have to be so confident that they didnt leave any evidence to keep her alive and not dispose of the body.

I'd be very surprised if she is still alive.

But whoever took her/killed her needs catching.

I can't believe how much apathy about the fact a murdering paedophile is possibly to blame for this and no one seems to care much.

At what point would you stop trying to catch him? What limit would you set to spending on one case? It cannot be that there is no limit.

I often hear people saying that there should be no limit on spending for several things - various aspects of education, healthcare, policing, etc. They also say things like "one case is too many" regarding paedophilia, abuse, some illnesses and so on. This is clearly nonsense. We don't have unlimited funds and we cannot pour all our resources into a single issue, so we satisfice and ration them out. The hard truth is that we make a decision to accept a certain level of all these terrible crimes, diseases, etc, as additional amounts continue to produce declining benefit for each extra pound spent. Not only do we ration out our funds between hard cases, but we reserve some amounts from them entirely and spend them on 'frivalous' activities, as the benefits to general society from that are deemed to be worth more than the marginal benefit of spending still more on the hard cases.

Just because there is a paedophile on the loose doesn't mean we would bankrupt ourselves to find him. There are many other paedophiles and many other calls for our funds. So when would you stop spending on one case? And 'never' is not an option.

It's very simple. I would stop spending when the police officer in charge of the case says, "We have exhausted all avenues of inquiry. Unless new evidence comes to light I think the case should be closed".

We don't listen to experts enough any more.

All our publicly-funded experts are competing for funds from the same pot. If one gets more, another one gets less. There has to be some point where you would take it out of his hands. Otherwise you are misusing resources that should be employed better elsewhere. I would say we are already way past that point. But you must have some point where you cut it off. Would you let him rack it up to £100m?

[Doobs]

Without any knowledge of what theyre actually working on Id be shocked if the police were truely at a stage where they are inches away from solving the case that they need funds for 6 months to get it done.  From the sounds of it, it seems pretty desperate, like theyve still got some avenues of enquiry but nothing concrete.  If they were so close to solving it then surely they would make a statement to that effect to raise public interest.

Agree with the point made earlier too, after this long Id just be shocked if she is still alive.  Especially with the big campaign to find her, the culprit would have to be so confident that they didnt leave any evidence to keep her alive and not dispose of the body.

I'd be very surprised if she is still alive.

But whoever took her/killed her needs catching.

I can't believe how much apathy about the fact a murdering paedophile is possibly to blame for this and no one seems to care much.

At what point would you stop trying to catch him? What limit would you set to spending on one case? It cannot be that there is no limit.

I often hear people saying that there should be no limit on spending for several things - various aspects of education, healthcare, policing, etc. They also say things like "one case is too many" regarding paedophilia, abuse, some illnesses and so on. This is clearly nonsense. We don't have unlimited funds and we cannot pour all our resources into a single issue, so we satisfice and ration them out. The hard truth is that we make a decision to accept a certain level of all these terrible crimes, diseases, etc, as additional amounts continue to produce declining benefit for each extra pound spent. Not only do we ration out our funds between hard cases, but we reserve some amounts from them entirely and spend them on 'frivalous' activities, as the benefits to general society from that are deemed to be worth more than the marginal benefit of spending still more on the hard cases.

Just because there is a paedophile on the loose doesn't mean we would bankrupt ourselves to find him. There are many other paedophiles and many other calls for our funds. So when would you stop spending on one case? And 'never' is not an option.

It's very simple. I would stop spending when the police officer in charge of the case says, "We have exhausted all avenues of inquiry. Unless new evidence comes to light I think the case should be closed".

We don't listen to experts enough any more.

They would have saved £11 million if they had followed this advice all those years ago.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/2234652/McCanns-friends-anger-as-Portuguese-police-close-Madeleine-case.html

[Skippy]

Once upon a time I read a book called "Hoods" (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hoods-Gangs-Nottingham-Study-Organised-ebook/ - the book review is that it probably started out interesting, but by the time the lawyers said "well, you can't say that, you'll be sued!" there was little of interest left). One of the things I found interesting about it is the idea that the police have lots of cases on the go where they are pretty sure there are some hoodlums who are doing some nefarious activity, but to actually get enough evidence to convict someone takes time and effort and they don't have the budget to look at all of them so they have to prioritise.

My point is that there is usually something else you can do with any case, and the police have lots of cases they are never going to get to the bottom of due to lack of resources. So to say:

It's very simple. I would stop spending when the police officer in charge of the case says, "We have exhausted all avenues of inquiry. Unless new evidence comes to light I think the case should be closed".

means ignoring some other cases that also haven't exhausted all avenues of inquiry.