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Hi, NJ native chiming in here. We have a vast majority of our state served by regional and light rail services, as well as a bus system that supplements it to a

by moate 8y ago

Hi, NJ native chiming in here. We have a vast majority of our state served by regional and light rail services, as well as a bus system that supplements it to areas where it would be difficult to get added rail lines. Anecdotally, you can find drugs, needles or crime just about anywhere if you want. There are amazingly safe suburbs with train stations as well as less safe suburbs with train stations and city stops on both side of the spectrum. These people aren't riding the rails to get to some juicy soft targets out in the wealthy burbs. Crime is a law enforcement problem, not a transportation problem. Your whole post is NIMBY nonsense. I promise you, there's plenty of poor drug addicts and criminals in areas that aren't served by any sort of mass transit. Your thesis that they'll come ruin a perfectly good thing is just as flawed as my thesis that they'll magically all stop behaving that way if we gave them mass transit which allowed them greater access to different job opportunities (there's elements of truth in both, but they're both more complex then just a quick summary) TL;dr- What's incorrect about your statement is basically everything in your statement, or at least your perception of cause and effect.

osdiab 8y ago
An addendum: crime isn't just a law enforcement problem, it's reflective of broader societal ills like wealth inequality, poor education, and lack of access to opportunity. In my opinion, law enforcement is a bandaid for those symptoms, but does not strike at the underlying issues, and defining crime and poverty as that domain is also probably counterproductive to reducing them long term. My experience in most of East Asia is that the police are extremely unintimidating [1] when you see them but generally invisible otherwise, perhaps indicating that strong law enforcement is not a requirement for managing crime rates. [1] Tokyo: https://imgur.com/a/FGstZJ3 https://imgur.com/a/FGstZJ3
- moate 8y ago
  I'll concede that describing it as a "law enforcement" problem is a bit of a broad stroke (what is the purpose of these laws? who made them? are they just and fair? etc.) My point was that trying to blame trains for importing criminals is a weak, unsubstantiated argument lacking true causation. OP later posted that "if you look at a crime map, you'll see a hot spot around the train stations". This is an objective fact, but the conclusion is only one of many possibilities (criminals are more likely to attack people in transit because they carry more valuables, people are more irritable after travel and likely to engage in crime, train stations have higher concentrations of people than other sectors and therefor see a higher number of criminals, there's more enforcement, etc). I was mostly attempting to address that point. Crime is, ultimately and simplistically, a law enforcement problem. Preventing criminals from turning to crime is a social services/educational problem. What things constitute crimes is a societal/cultural issue. Poverty is a whole OTHER ball of wax, although many behaviors of the most impoverished are criminalized. FWIW, Japan has plenty of problems when it comes to policing and crime due to their culture of expected police success rates.
- wahern 8y ago
  > strong law enforcement is not a requirement for managing crime rates. There are strains of American culture that have long been violent and confrontational. These strains are perpetuated by "polite" society that has used violence and segregation to keep them at bay. IOW, we're an altogether violent society. Addressing these dynamics is difficult to say the least, but it's why we can't simply import strategies from abroad. So, for example, we can't simply take guns away from the cops without also refactoring our criminal and mental health systems to comprehensively deescalate things. Our inability to holistically change (independent from ideology) is why drug decriminalization and lessened property crime punishment have created such spectacular social failures. That said, to be fair East and Southeast Asian countries tend to have very strict and swift criminal punishments, particularly for drugs and violence. Even in Japan--https://www.tofugu.com/japan/drug-laws-in-japan/ https://www.tofugu.com/japan/drug-laws-in-japan/ In some key ways Asia practices more violence and segregation than the U.S. I think it's mostly Western Europeans and South Americans that are all-around softies.

by moate 8y ago

osdiab 8y ago

An addendum: crime isn't just a law enforcement problem, it's reflective of broader societal ills like wealth inequality, poor education, and lack of access to opportunity. In my opinion, law enforcement is a bandaid for those symptoms, but does not strike at the underlying issues, and defining crime and poverty as that domain is also probably counterproductive to reducing them long term. My experience in most of East Asia is that the police are extremely unintimidating [1] when you see them but generally invisible otherwise, perhaps indicating that strong law enforcement is not a requirement for managing crime rates. [1] Tokyo: https://imgur.com/a/FGstZJ3 https://imgur.com/a/FGstZJ3

moate 8y ago
I'll concede that describing it as a "law enforcement" problem is a bit of a broad stroke (what is the purpose of these laws? who made them? are they just and fair? etc.) My point was that trying to blame trains for importing criminals is a weak, unsubstantiated argument lacking true causation. OP later posted that "if you look at a crime map, you'll see a hot spot around the train stations". This is an objective fact, but the conclusion is only one of many possibilities (criminals are more likely to attack people in transit because they carry more valuables, people are more irritable after travel and likely to engage in crime, train stations have higher concentrations of people than other sectors and therefor see a higher number of criminals, there's more enforcement, etc). I was mostly attempting to address that point. Crime is, ultimately and simplistically, a law enforcement problem. Preventing criminals from turning to crime is a social services/educational problem. What things constitute crimes is a societal/cultural issue. Poverty is a whole OTHER ball of wax, although many behaviors of the most impoverished are criminalized. FWIW, Japan has plenty of problems when it comes to policing and crime due to their culture of expected police success rates.
wahern 8y ago
> strong law enforcement is not a requirement for managing crime rates. There are strains of American culture that have long been violent and confrontational. These strains are perpetuated by "polite" society that has used violence and segregation to keep them at bay. IOW, we're an altogether violent society. Addressing these dynamics is difficult to say the least, but it's why we can't simply import strategies from abroad. So, for example, we can't simply take guns away from the cops without also refactoring our criminal and mental health systems to comprehensively deescalate things. Our inability to holistically change (independent from ideology) is why drug decriminalization and lessened property crime punishment have created such spectacular social failures. That said, to be fair East and Southeast Asian countries tend to have very strict and swift criminal punishments, particularly for drugs and violence. Even in Japan--https://www.tofugu.com/japan/drug-laws-in-japan/ https://www.tofugu.com/japan/drug-laws-in-japan/ In some key ways Asia practices more violence and segregation than the U.S. I think it's mostly Western Europeans and South Americans that are all-around softies.