4 ms·

Lowering your expectations for low-income households and treating people that come from them as if they're too stupid and/or broken to not commit crimes is wron

by mjolk 10y ago

Lowering your expectations for low-income households and treating people that come from them as if they're too stupid and/or broken to not commit crimes is wrong is offensive. There's a difference between acknowledging the value free education, cheap housing, and money for food and outright turning a blind eye to opportunists and criminals. >If you're a druggie and need money for a fix. How is that your or my problem? You get yourself addicted to drugs. If someone mugs my girlfriend and trades her phone for some heroin, I don't understand why I'm supposed to shrug it off, feel sympathy for the criminal, and let that junkie make someone else live in fear so they can get high. >there a forces that prod some people towards classes of crimes. That goes the other way too, for example considering tax evasion. Muggings, rapes, and violent crime have drastically different effects on people than the taxman putting a lower number in a ledger. Trying to conflate crimes that happen to a person with financial loopholes is apologetics for violent criminals. >Or say you're in the country illegally. Then don't come to the country illegally if you're going to do destructive things against the people that you want to help you.

yoo1I 10y ago
I'm not turning a blind eye, I'm acknowledging that different classes of people have different classes of problems and commit different classes of crime. I am not conflating these different types of crimes; what I am saying is that "crime" is really just a tool to deal with behavior that is detrimental to a societal good. And maybe that it's possible to deal with these problems in more appropriate ways then just trying to enforce laws with higher pressure. And while you're right, that tax evasion is different from mugging someone on the street, don't pretend that white-collar crime is a victimless crime. And again, increased pressure to enforce existing laws, might not be the best answer there either. And again: If I am a druggie and need a fix, then it's more likely that this problem has a better solution that just throw me in jail. It makes a whole lot more sense to treat a serious drug addiction as an illness. But that needs a little bit more empathy than your approach of "You knew the risk when you went out skiing, don't complain to me that you're on the ground with a broken leg now" - sure there is some truth to it, but that doesn't help anyone.
- mjolk 10y ago
  I'm not pretending white-collar crime is victimless, but I'm also not at all comfortable with the bias of "remove the consequences of crime for people perceived to be disadvantaged." The issue of treating drug addiction as a health issue instead of a crime is a tangential topic, but enforcing the law when a drug addict commits a crime is not (e.g. mugging, theft, assault).
  - yoo1I 10y ago
    I am not sure where you got "remove all consequences" from. I said "increasing enforcement of existing laws, might not be good policy for the people who will suffer from this enforcement as well as not resulting in the decrease in crime rates that you might think" But at this point we're talking past each other. Have a good day.
  - mercer 10y ago
    > The issue of treating drug addiction as a health issue instead of a crime is a tangential topic, but enforcing the law when a drug addict commits a crime is not (e.g. mugging, theft, assault). To me it's not tangential, but rather the core of the issue. Let's take the druggie. I agree with you that 'removing consequences' of crime committed to acquire more drugs is a terrible idea. Justice to the people affected is important. However, if this consequence is jail time, a criminal record, or any other form of punishment that doesn't benefit both the addict and those affected by him, we're only sweeping the problem under the rug, and we're not acknowledging the complexities of addiction and the dignity of the human behind the 'druggie'. Furthermore, it's likely that said addict will become a worse problem for society down the road. It's lose-lose. There are plenty of solutions where the addict's crime have consequences other than simply punishing them that are more effective, less dehumanizing, and ultimately better for society as a whole. On a more... ethical level, I feel that where we fundamentally go wrong in these situations is that we forget that being poor, being an addict, and even to a degree being a criminal is not just a simple matter of choice. I've personally known many addicts, criminals and poor people, and I can say with full conviction that the vast majority of them were good people who made mistakes that were not 100% their responsibility. Instead of bickering over how much responsible they are, accepting this reality and trying to approach it with compassion for all sides should already improve many things. Hell, if more people would just go a bit below 100% it'd be a good start. I think I'm a pretty good person, but putting myself in the position of my addict, poor, or criminal friends, with the same environment, parents, friends, and choices available, all of them mostly out of their control, well, I'd likely make those same choices. And applying everything I've learned about willpower, group dynamics (groupthink), peer pressure, and whatnot, makes me even more convinced that punishment is not only a solution that doesn't work, but morally wrong and detrimental to society as a whole.

by mjolk 10y ago

yoo1I 10y ago

I'm not turning a blind eye, I'm acknowledging that different classes of people have different classes of problems and commit different classes of crime. I am not conflating these different types of crimes; what I am saying is that "crime" is really just a tool to deal with behavior that is detrimental to a societal good. And maybe that it's possible to deal with these problems in more appropriate ways then just trying to enforce laws with higher pressure. And while you're right, that tax evasion is different from mugging someone on the street, don't pretend that white-collar crime is a victimless crime. And again, increased pressure to enforce existing laws, might not be the best answer there either. And again: If I am a druggie and need a fix, then it's more likely that this problem has a better solution that just throw me in jail. It makes a whole lot more sense to treat a serious drug addiction as an illness. But that needs a little bit more empathy than your approach of "You knew the risk when you went out skiing, don't complain to me that you're on the ground with a broken leg now" - sure there is some truth to it, but that doesn't help anyone.

mjolk 10y ago
I'm not pretending white-collar crime is victimless, but I'm also not at all comfortable with the bias of "remove the consequences of crime for people perceived to be disadvantaged." The issue of treating drug addiction as a health issue instead of a crime is a tangential topic, but enforcing the law when a drug addict commits a crime is not (e.g. mugging, theft, assault).
- yoo1I 10y ago
  I am not sure where you got "remove all consequences" from. I said "increasing enforcement of existing laws, might not be good policy for the people who will suffer from this enforcement as well as not resulting in the decrease in crime rates that you might think" But at this point we're talking past each other. Have a good day.
- mercer 10y ago
  > The issue of treating drug addiction as a health issue instead of a crime is a tangential topic, but enforcing the law when a drug addict commits a crime is not (e.g. mugging, theft, assault). To me it's not tangential, but rather the core of the issue. Let's take the druggie. I agree with you that 'removing consequences' of crime committed to acquire more drugs is a terrible idea. Justice to the people affected is important. However, if this consequence is jail time, a criminal record, or any other form of punishment that doesn't benefit both the addict and those affected by him, we're only sweeping the problem under the rug, and we're not acknowledging the complexities of addiction and the dignity of the human behind the 'druggie'. Furthermore, it's likely that said addict will become a worse problem for society down the road. It's lose-lose. There are plenty of solutions where the addict's crime have consequences other than simply punishing them that are more effective, less dehumanizing, and ultimately better for society as a whole. On a more... ethical level, I feel that where we fundamentally go wrong in these situations is that we forget that being poor, being an addict, and even to a degree being a criminal is not just a simple matter of choice. I've personally known many addicts, criminals and poor people, and I can say with full conviction that the vast majority of them were good people who made mistakes that were not 100% their responsibility. Instead of bickering over how much responsible they are, accepting this reality and trying to approach it with compassion for all sides should already improve many things. Hell, if more people would just go a bit below 100% it'd be a good start. I think I'm a pretty good person, but putting myself in the position of my addict, poor, or criminal friends, with the same environment, parents, friends, and choices available, all of them mostly out of their control, well, I'd likely make those same choices. And applying everything I've learned about willpower, group dynamics (groupthink), peer pressure, and whatnot, makes me even more convinced that punishment is not only a solution that doesn't work, but morally wrong and detrimental to society as a whole.