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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

by 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 osdiab 8y ago

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.