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In our society, everyone is a lawbreaker. There are so many laws that surely everyone is guilty of breaking some law. This results in police being able to discr

In our society, everyone is a lawbreaker. There are so many laws that surely everyone is guilty of breaking some law. This results in police being able to discriminate by selectively enforcing laws. Since everyone is probably doing something illegal, police do racist things by profiling people who are 'probably doing [something illegal]' without sounding racist. It's a common pattern in societies where the laws are so invasive and numerous that everyone breaks them. We need reasonable laws that are equally and fully enforced to reduce this particular outlet of racism.

ihumanable 6y ago
One of the things I recently started thinking about is how most of the "wacky hijinks" in TV Shows and Movies would almost definitely result in your arrest today. Many of the "innocent pranks" and "fun times" that my grandparents and parents would tell me about from their youth, also have components that have been made illegal now. Almost every Senior Prank has some component of B&E / vandalism. I've just found it odd how the media we consume seems to exist in this completely different world, where baristas live in massive apartments they could never afford and most of the fun and excitement of the story comes from situations that in real life would most likely end in your arrest. It seems like decades of being "tough on crime" and having a "war on drugs" has created a society where everyone is always breaking some law. That means that we are all at the mercy of Law Enforcement officers as they use their "professional discretion" to decide who is breaking it enough. This is an older article but still relevant as ever https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/08/03/how-the-supreme-court-made-it-legal-for-cops-to-pull-you-over-for-just-about-anything https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/08/03/how-the-suprem... Do you have an air freshener in your car, the police can pull you over for it. Then claim they smell alcohol or marijuana and search your person and vehicle. As long as they stopped you "in good faith" because they thought, even incorrectly, that they could stop you for obstructed view, then it's cool with the courts. It seems like we are overdue for a correction. While every crime statistic has pointed to the fact that we live in the safest time in history, we continue with zero-tolerance tough-on-crime policy making that does nothing to make us safer.
- floren 6y ago
  You don't even need an air freshener in the car. On a Friday night you could very well get pulled over because "your tail-lights weren't on" e.g. the cop is fishing for a DUI even though you were driving fine. When you turn out not to be drunk, the cop writes you a ticket but don't worry, all you have to do is show up at traffic court to get it cleared! Never mind that the car's light switch was set to "auto" the whole time and if the headlights were on, the taillights were also on...
wwright 6y ago
Equally and fully enforcing laws seems about as likely as equally and fully eliminating bugs from all software to me
- cryptoz 6y ago
  Look at the efforts put into reducing bugs in software: how much money is spent on that, new paradigms are creating to reduce bugs, linters are written and used, etc. What are the specific, and large-scale efforts made to make the law and enforcement more equal? We could at least try as hard as software bugs - rather than the current situation where the scale is tipped in the other way (ie there are numerous incentives to introduce 'bugs' into the system and not many to take them out)
  - wwright 6y ago
    Oh, definitely agreed – just trying to illustrate that we have to design a society that accounts for the inevitable failures in enforcement as well.
throwaway894345 6y ago
It's important to be correct about the particular nature of the injustice: the police aren't profiling people who are probably doing something illegal. To the extent that police do profile (I don't think it's a question that they do, only to what extent), their profiling is based on who they perceive to be the most likely of committing the worst offenses, not simply "who is likely to be doing anything illegal at all". That said, even if black Americans are more likely to commit these worst of offenses (as reported by victims), it's still unjust because any given black individual may not be guilty and doesn't deserve increased scrutiny based on the color of their skin--justice ought to be colorblind and individualistic. That said, not everything that appears to be profiling is actually profiling. Police are deployed more densely to areas with high violent crime, and these areas tend to skew black. That means they're more likely to witness more minor offenses as well. The racial disparity here isn't due to profiling, its due to the high incidence of violent crime in certain predominately-minority communities. This is an important distinction because it determines the best course of action to solve the disparity problem--if the problem is mostly attributable to police profiling, then fixing profiling is the most urgent problem. If it's due to high incidence of violence in communities, then the best solutions will be various anti-violence programs and keeping violent offenders off of the streets (and ideally rehabilitating them).
- zo1 6y ago
  That sort of nuance is almost never brought to the fore, unfortunately. Right now, public policy and media-attention seems to be entirely driven by empathy and outrage.
cataphract 6y ago
So if at a given time it's impossible to investigate all burglaries where the amount stolen is less than $200, should we make them all legal? Discretion in deciding which crimes to investigate is always necessary. Discretion on charging and guilty pleas seem much more problematic to me.

ihumanable 6y ago

One of the things I recently started thinking about is how most of the "wacky hijinks" in TV Shows and Movies would almost definitely result in your arrest today. Many of the "innocent pranks" and "fun times" that my grandparents and parents would tell me about from their youth, also have components that have been made illegal now. Almost every Senior Prank has some component of B&E / vandalism. I've just found it odd how the media we consume seems to exist in this completely different world, where baristas live in massive apartments they could never afford and most of the fun and excitement of the story comes from situations that in real life would most likely end in your arrest. It seems like decades of being "tough on crime" and having a "war on drugs" has created a society where everyone is always breaking some law. That means that we are all at the mercy of Law Enforcement officers as they use their "professional discretion" to decide who is breaking it enough. This is an older article but still relevant as ever https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/08/03/how-the-supreme-court-made-it-legal-for-cops-to-pull-you-over-for-just-about-anything https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/08/03/how-the-suprem... Do you have an air freshener in your car, the police can pull you over for it. Then claim they smell alcohol or marijuana and search your person and vehicle. As long as they stopped you "in good faith" because they thought, even incorrectly, that they could stop you for obstructed view, then it's cool with the courts. It seems like we are overdue for a correction. While every crime statistic has pointed to the fact that we live in the safest time in history, we continue with zero-tolerance tough-on-crime policy making that does nothing to make us safer.

floren 6y ago
You don't even need an air freshener in the car. On a Friday night you could very well get pulled over because "your tail-lights weren't on" e.g. the cop is fishing for a DUI even though you were driving fine. When you turn out not to be drunk, the cop writes you a ticket but don't worry, all you have to do is show up at traffic court to get it cleared! Never mind that the car's light switch was set to "auto" the whole time and if the headlights were on, the taillights were also on...

wwright 6y ago

Equally and fully enforcing laws seems about as likely as equally and fully eliminating bugs from all software to me

cryptoz 6y ago
Look at the efforts put into reducing bugs in software: how much money is spent on that, new paradigms are creating to reduce bugs, linters are written and used, etc. What are the specific, and large-scale efforts made to make the law and enforcement more equal? We could at least try as hard as software bugs - rather than the current situation where the scale is tipped in the other way (ie there are numerous incentives to introduce 'bugs' into the system and not many to take them out)
- wwright 6y ago
  Oh, definitely agreed – just trying to illustrate that we have to design a society that accounts for the inevitable failures in enforcement as well.

throwaway894345 6y ago

It's important to be correct about the particular nature of the injustice: the police aren't profiling people who are probably doing something illegal. To the extent that police do profile (I don't think it's a question that they do, only to what extent), their profiling is based on who they perceive to be the most likely of committing the worst offenses, not simply "who is likely to be doing anything illegal at all". That said, even if black Americans are more likely to commit these worst of offenses (as reported by victims), it's still unjust because any given black individual may not be guilty and doesn't deserve increased scrutiny based on the color of their skin--justice ought to be colorblind and individualistic. That said, not everything that appears to be profiling is actually profiling. Police are deployed more densely to areas with high violent crime, and these areas tend to skew black. That means they're more likely to witness more minor offenses as well. The racial disparity here isn't due to profiling, its due to the high incidence of violent crime in certain predominately-minority communities. This is an important distinction because it determines the best course of action to solve the disparity problem--if the problem is mostly attributable to police profiling, then fixing profiling is the most urgent problem. If it's due to high incidence of violence in communities, then the best solutions will be various anti-violence programs and keeping violent offenders off of the streets (and ideally rehabilitating them).

zo1 6y ago
That sort of nuance is almost never brought to the fore, unfortunately. Right now, public policy and media-attention seems to be entirely driven by empathy and outrage.

cataphract 6y ago

So if at a given time it's impossible to investigate all burglaries where the amount stolen is less than $200, should we make them all legal? Discretion in deciding which crimes to investigate is always necessary. Discretion on charging and guilty pleas seem much more problematic to me.