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Treating violence as a public health problem has produced great results
- elboru 8y agoI would love to see something similar applied to Mexico. The scale would have to be a lot bigger, and I guess it would be a lot more dangerous since we are literally facing wars for territory over here, taking soldiers out of the battlefield wouldn't look appealing for the drug cartels.
- mc32 8y agoBut even in Mexico really violent places (50+/100k/yr) are pretty highly concentrated in known areas. Not all Mexico is violent, like not all Maryland is violent, like not all Honduras is violent (it happens in pockets) often fueled by the drugs trade. It would be interesting (and a welcome outcome) to see if this insight and method of fighting crime is accepted and used by locales high relative violence rates.
- eric_h 8y agoIt's true. The Yucatan peninsula is quite safe and also gorgeous. I only lost $250 when the police robbed me [non violently] the last time I was there.
- eric_h 8y agoI'm not even joking, I'm planning on going back this fall.
- andai 8y agoLast I heard, the police are doing this in Australia now. Lauren Southern receives $68,000 bill from Victoria Police https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/lauren-southern-on-her-68000-bill-from-the-police/news-story/74c6fe8b4e1578c64726602575cd626b https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/lauren-southe...
- foxh0und 8y agoNot sure that's true, I haven't read about it (live in AUS). A lot of the campaigns by the opposition in the upcoming state elections are heavily focused on being "tough on crime".
- felix_nagaand 8y agoGot an article or something?
- andai 8y agoLauren Southern receives $68,000 bill from Victoria Police https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/lauren-southern-on-her-68000-bill-from-the-police/news-story/74c6fe8b4e1578c64726602575cd626b https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/lauren-southe...
- pas 8y agoHere's a much better link http://www.theunshackled.net/rundown/victoria-police-issue-southern-and-molyneux-with-68000-bill-for-melbourne-show/ http://www.theunshackled.net/rundown/victoria-police-issue-s...
- eloff 8y agoI only spent two hours driving through Honduras years ago (the part between El Salvador and Nicaragua is very skinny) but the police tried that three times. They got it right at the border, but the other times we got away with just acting dumb for an hour until they got tired of us (easy to do since we spoke no Spanish.) I'd never go back there, life is finite and there are less dangerous, nicer countries to visit.
- jessaustin 8y agoNo need for anything complicated. Just end drug prohibition in USA, and Mexico will change drastically within a year. Human beings respond to incentives.
- usrusr 8y agoMakes me wonder what the existing organizations will do instead. Removing drug money will make them much less powerful, but they sure won't go down without a pivot.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoI guess you could look at what happened when prohibition ended in America.
- azernik 8y agoSoooooooo politics?
- Double_a_92 8y agoBecome legal producers?
- roninb 8y agoNot sure if you know this or not but they're already pivoting to avocados...
- everdev 8y agoWhen the US pot market became saturated through legalization the cartels just shifted to other drugs. If you legalize those they will shift to something else. With the money, power and guns they have I don't think expecting them to take legal jobs is realistic. If you legalize drugs in Mexico though and they can start legitimate companies that might end the violence, but would be a huge blow to the rule of law.
- felix_nagaand 8y ago
- mnm1 8y agoHas Mexico thought about legalizing all drugs yet? Do you think this violence would exist if drugs were legal? It's hard for me to imagine such violence when people are just going to their boring jobs in the legal drug trade. Yeah the US might not like it, but who cares now with the current administration's hate for Mexico and Mexicans. Imagine what it could do for Mexico. Becoming the top economy in the western hemisphere would be trivial while eliminating violence, corruption, and crime.
- everdev 8y agoThere are many aspects to violence but I think it comes down to opportunity cost. Until the police/military are strong and law abiding enough, cartels will continue to see violence as a risk worth taking even if their main business becomes legal.
- icebraining 8y agoThey tried that in the past: https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/1940-the-year-mexico-legalised-drugs/ https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/1940-the-year-mex...
- sbaha88 8y agoI really hope that their work is effective and spreads. In Kazakhstan, we recently had a tragedy when our Olympic bronze medalist was killed when trying to stop thieves from stealing his car mirrors.
- SiempreViernes 8y agoRest in peace Denis Ten :( I'm curious, was this crime very unusual even for Almaty, that someone gets killed by strangers over something like a car mirror, or is it the fact that it was Ten that caused such attention?
- sbaha88 8y agoIt's actually very unusual especially because it happened right in Almaty's downtown. Downtowns in Kazakhstan are usually considered safe.
- aaronbrethorst 8y agoThe NRA has been extremely effective at keeping gun violence from being studied in exactly this manner in the United States. https://www.npr.org/2018/04/05/599773911/how-the-nra-worked-to-stifle-gun-violence-research https://www.npr.org/2018/04/05/599773911/how-the-nra-worked-...
- AmericanChopper 8y agoIf “the most violent country in the developed world” has the some of the worlds strictest gun control laws, something tells me there’s not much of a connection between gun ownership and violent crime.
- Dylan16807 8y agoYou can only make so strong of an argument from a single data point. Tell that "something" to do some proper research into it.
- AmericanChopper 8y agoWhen you account for every country that has available data, there is no correlation at all. If anything a very weak negative correlation arises. https://medium.com/@bjcampbell/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-between-gun-ownership-and-homicide-1108ed400be5 https://medium.com/@bjcampbell/everybodys-lying-about-the-li...
- Lewton 8y agoa more nuanced perspective http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/06/guns-and-states/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/06/guns-and-states/
- AmericanChopper 8y agoI’m not sure if picking random confounding variables until you get the results you want is more nuanced than looking at the raw statistics.
- vixen99 8y agoSomeone please tell the Mayor of London where in 2018 the "capital's murder rate overtakes New York for the first time ever".
- albertgoeswoof 8y agoThat was an anomaly for February, and is a good example of how statistics are manipulated by the media to fit a narrative: https://metro.co.uk/2018/07/15/new-york-murder-rate-is-much-higher-than-londons-new-figures-show-7717873/ https://metro.co.uk/2018/07/15/new-york-murder-rate-is-much-... London is safer that New York on almost every measure, but NYC has come a long way over the past 20 years.
- simoncarter 8y agoFrom the article: "Where could a public health approach to violence be introduced next? One possibility is London, where in 2017 knife crime among under-25s reached a five-year high. In recent months, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Cressida Dick, and the mayor, Sadiq Khan, have been among those calling for a public health approach."
- nortiero 8y agoJust to add a few details, Cressida Dick is the person who ordered the execution of a brasilian electrician, down in the London Underground. It does not surprise me that aristocrats are in favour of a medical approach to crime: to help enforce the state monopoly on violence itself.
- j9461701 8y agoI'm not quite sure I fully buy into it. Crime has been steadily declining all over the Western world since the '90s, with a few notable exceptions like Baltimore post-BLM, and so the entire VRU concept may be specious. New York has seen its murder rate plunge 75% since its height in 1990 despite not employing this technique, which is a larger drop than Glasgow experienced. Perhaps doing nothing would have been just as effective? Or perhaps this: >This meant ramping up traditional penal measures – increased stop-and-search and stricter sentencing for knife possession – alongside preventive measures in line with the public health approach. Resulted in all of the most recalcitrant offenders being put behind bars right at the onset of the program, leaving behind only those people more amenable to non-violence. Or put another way, when the doctor mentions seeing constant repeated faces in her ER: >Often, the same people would come back through the accident and emergency departments again and again, repeated victims and perpetrators of violent attacks. Would simply locking up every one of those people have produced a similar or greater drop in violent crime compared to the VRU approach? Is the "violent interceptor" and community outreach and counselors and all that simply gilding a lily? Also: >The incident has stayed with her, an indication of how bad the situation in her city had become. Well that or it's 1890s Germany. The Junkers loved to scar each other on the face with their dueling swords, as a way to prove their manhood and as a mark of inclusion in the aristocratic orders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dueling_scar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dueling_scar Some cultures get barbed wire tattoos around their arm, others a superficial slashing wound to the face. Tomato tomato ....that expression really doesn't work in text.
- sometimesijust 8y agoYou should be quoting violent crime rates rather than murder rates. The articles premise is that violent crime is infectious but the infection does not spread if the patients all die.
- ptaipale 8y agoEven if "patients" die, their friends and brothers don't, and the violence spreads. When looking at trends, murder rate is a better metric than counting violent crimes, because statistics for other violence are quite easily impacted by changes in policies of how to record reports. A dead person is a dead person, it's a very consistent metric. Of course, it is also a changing metric as emergency care improves - wounds that used to be deadly can now be treated. For instance, Swedish cities are reporting a vastly improved care for shooting wounds, as hospitals have gained experience and developed methods in treating them.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- panic 8y ago> “The idea that’s wrong is that these people are ‘bad’ and we know what to do with them, which is punish them,” says Slutkin. “That’s fundamentally a misunderstanding of the human. Behaviour is formed by modelling and copying. When you’re in a health lens, you don’t blame. You try to understand, and you aim for solutions.” Analyzing our current justice system from this perspective shows just how absurd it is. Sending people to jail for committing minor crimes is like sending people to a smallpox quarantine camp for coughing.
- AstralStorm 8y agoUnlike quarantines, a reverse dispersal with watch to dismantle centers of criminality could probably work too... But nobody is testing these things because they think they know better.
- tremon 8y agoNot only that, but we intern coughing people with other people of various illnesses, and then we send those infected back to society based on time criteria, instead of health criteria.
- vorpalhex 8y agoThis sounds great until we realize that the vast majority of crimes, even minor ones, have someone on the other side of them. Simple assault, theft, fraud, reckless driving. Hey, someone came up and beat the crap out of you for the $20 in your wallet? Well sorry, we can't do anything but talk about how they might of come to this point. Someone who gets the flu, unless they're acting to intentionally infect others, has no "victim". That doesn't mean justice should be based on retribution, but removal of the offender from society is something which society typically requires.
- SandersAK 8y agoViolence is an output, a symptom of something else. Punishing a violent offender with violence (imprisonment etc) is just a form of reifying that behavior. Alternative treatment of violence is not the same as saying there are "no consequences" - it's acknowledging that to actually "cure" violent behavior requires other methods. Removing people from society has historically not stopped violence (see Gulags, mass prison, etc). What it does do is instill a sense of fear in the populace that the governing power can use as a form of control. A sense of fear brought on by, you guessed it, a threat of violence!
- DanielBMarkham 8y agoI love the idea of doing things to prevent more suffering. “Despite the fact that violence has always been present, the world does not have to accept it as an inevitable part of the human condition,” says the WHO guidance on violence prevention. But this is bullshit. Humans are a violent species. Always have been, always will be. The only question that's relevant is: when is it acceptable that violence be used? Ideally it would be a bare minimum, and by people who have nothing to benefit from it. If there's a crack house with a kid that needs rescuing, or a bank robbery gone bad with a hostage, I want somebody somewhere to be using violence. Public health approaches to social problems are interesting, both because they have some statistically significant benefit -- and because they tend to over-generalize what the problems are and leave out many important edge cases. You can't say they're bad because there is progress to be shown. But you always wonder how many edge cases were overlooked and if overall we aren't institutionalizing a hardcore subset that will never be solved at the expense of making the problem simple enough to mentally engage with.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoBut this is bullshit. Humans are a violent species I would frame it as: Life is challenging and the world is not a nice place. If you succeeded in completely removing all aggression from the species, we would soon go extinct. So managing such tendencies and channeling them constructively is a necessity. Our very survival depends on not being completely rid of such traits. We want to be civilized, not "domesticated" like sheep waiting for slaughter.
- DanielBMarkham 8y agoI don't disagree with that framing. I think it's probably much better than mine. We want the maximum amount of peaceful diversity we can have both as individuals and as small social groups. It's a prerequisite for survival, as you point out. I am concerned that we tend to look at problems top-down, in simplistic language and jargon. This almost always leads to a call for more homogenization of the species. That's a survival risk for us.
- 8y ago
- rootw0rm 8y agomeh, that's kinda painful to read... needs some editing. also, an article with that many statistical claims should have footnotes IMO.
- oska 8y ago> also, an article with that many statistical claims should have footnotes IMO If you click on 'References' at the bottom of the article you get a short drop down list. But there is also a companion article [1] that gives more references and links. [1] https://mosaicscience.com/story/briefing-reading-violence-crime-knife-gang-epidemic-gun-health-prevention/ https://mosaicscience.com/story/briefing-reading-violence-cr...
- peteretep 8y ago> The [Scottish programme] is run by the police force, with support from the Scottish government ... [The American founder], a purist on the public health model of violence, says it is “horrible” for police to administer it, since police are often part of the problem. As far from perfect as police in the UK are, I get the impression that the Brits have a very different relationship from the police than most Americans do.
- zaarn 8y agoI think you can say that for a lot of countries. I would say the same is true in Germany. It's probably a cultural difference.
- ams6110 8y agoWhat do you think "most Americans" relationship with the police is? Speaking for myself, I don't really have one, but all my encounters with the police have been professional and respectful.
- dickbasedregex 8y agoLucky you. Even with family as law enforcement, I've never trusted police. As a vet I'm disgusted by their lack of training and quickness to shoot first and ask questions later. Last I checked the average is 32 dogs shot by US cops a day. I don't even need to delve into the refusal to wear body cams, race issues, etc. etc. American police have not given Americans any reason to assume they are ever on the same side. Eighteen year old infantrymen, who have an infinitely greater chance of danger, have more resolve and professionalism than American cops. I'd trust that 18 year old ground pounder over a cop any day over any thing.
- peteretep 8y agoI get the idea that people who join the police in the US do it for the authority, where police in the UK are well aware that 95% of the authority they have is "by consent" of those they have authority over.
- ataturk 8y agoWhether or not it produces results, violence is not a legitimate public health issue, it is a public safety issue. Confusing people with terminology is a bad idea. Public health officials should not allow their area of concern to be abused in this manner because there are serious issues relating to disease, and especially in the prevention of transmissible disease, along with the goals of sanitation that public health exists to address. Violence is a completely separate matter. I often see gun banners, e.g. anti-self defense do gooders attempting to re-cast violence as a public health issue in order to ramrod policy changes. They don't really care about public health, their agenda is civil disarmament. That means they are disarming the citizens who have right to self defense along with the bad elements, who don't follow laws to begin with. I find that to be a dangerous course of action that is very misguided. Whether you think people should own guns or not is beside the point. In the US, we have a right to self defense and we should have access to the tools and technologies that put teeth in that right and not just pay lip service to it. Individuals standing up for civility, enforcing it as necessary, is how we move forwards in preventing violence in our communities. It isn't just the job of the police, it's everyone's job to create and promote peaceful civilization.