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The incarceration rate of SF county is higher than any country or major city in Europe. Persecution ain’t the issue. Lack of housing, healthcare and honourable

The incarceration rate of SF county is higher than any country or major city in Europe. Persecution ain’t the issue. Lack of housing, healthcare and honourable work is.

NeutronStar 6y ago
The incarceration rate of the US as a whole is higher. So the fact that SF is also higher doesn't mean much.
dcolkitt 6y ago
Even if you released every prisoner in America, besides the rapists and murderers, the US would still have a higher incarceration rate than Europe. I'm sure the SF specific numbers would tell a similar story. You can't simply compare European to American incarceration statistics without taking into account that the US is an extremely criminal country for the developed world. And no, this doesn't have to do with universal healthcare or any other hobby horse. America had much higher homicide rates going back to the 18th century, well before modern European welfare states. (Not just the US, the Western Hemisphere in general has always had much higher rates of violent crime.) The fact of the matter is that we're a violent society. Absent total abolition of prison, we're always gong to have much higher incarceration rates than Europe.
- rayiner 6y ago
  The current US homicide rate is the same as in England in the late Middle Ages. It’s been 5-10x higher than the UK the entire 20th century. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0002.206/--decivilization-in-the-1960s?rgn=main;view=fulltext https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0002.206/--deci... Also, we have had Obamacare for a decade. We have a less complete social safety net than European countries, but people act like it doesn’t exist.
- michtzik 6y ago
  As a counterargument to the claim that Europe is less violent than the United States, especially over a historical period going back to the 18th century: Nazi Germany murdered more people in a single named process than the total number of murders in the United States for the entire 20th century.
  - robotresearcher 6y ago
    An estimated 12 million Africans were forcibly shipped to the US (and precursors) and they and their descendents enslaved for generations. Did you forget to count them? I’m not minimizing the evil of the Nazi murders. Just pointing out the US started out with a fundamental violence problem of incredible scale.
  - kcartlidge 6y ago
    There is a case to be made that war is just legalised murder, but nevertheless in these comparisons the context does not normally include war. And would you really want to? The US is far from innocent with its use of nuclear weapons, fire-bombing Japan (Truman: "there were more people killed by fire-bombs in Tokyo than dropping the atomic bombs"), Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. Note that I'm not saying you're wrong about Nazi Germany, just that, the whilst the death tolls may be either swift or cumulative, it remains the case that all countries are guilty on the war front. So to repeat: the context is criminality not war, where the distinction is the normally accepted delineation of the two.
    - michtzik 6y ago
      I wasn't even including war! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust > Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. Notice the use of the word "murdered" in the second sentence of the article, as well as throughout the rest. The context was violence, not criminality. But even if it were criminality, the Holocaust is widely considered a crime against humanity.
      - kcartlidge 6y ago
        > I wasn't even including war! Maybe you never intended to, but your comment reads: > Nazi Germany murdered more people in a single named process Reference to Nazi Germany does not, as you say, necessarily equate to war. However "a single named process" would to most readers be treated as narrowing it down to "a single named process" - World War Two. The most obvious simple reading of your comment would give the clear impression you meant the war. If that wasn't the intention, if the named process was the wider genocide, or simply the Third Reich, then fair enough. But I'm sure you can understand any misreading.
babesh 6y ago
Incarceration rate is an invalid indicator. You need to look at the crime rate, the release rate, and the rehabilitation rate. There are cycles of poverty and culture causing this but the government’s actions turn SF into both a honeypot and an accelerant for crime. It does this by turning a blind eye to crime both in talk and action. Criminals know that SF is a great place to commit crime. This draws them in from all over and they commit more crime. The DA is selling the narrative of rehabilitation but the criminals are just taking advantage of it to just commit more crime.

The incarceration rate of SF county is higher than any country or major city in Europe. Persecution ain’t the issue. Lack of housing, healthcare and honourable work is.

NeutronStar 6y ago

The incarceration rate of the US as a whole is higher. So the fact that SF is also higher doesn't mean much.

dcolkitt 6y ago

Even if you released every prisoner in America, besides the rapists and murderers, the US would still have a higher incarceration rate than Europe. I'm sure the SF specific numbers would tell a similar story. You can't simply compare European to American incarceration statistics without taking into account that the US is an extremely criminal country for the developed world. And no, this doesn't have to do with universal healthcare or any other hobby horse. America had much higher homicide rates going back to the 18th century, well before modern European welfare states. (Not just the US, the Western Hemisphere in general has always had much higher rates of violent crime.) The fact of the matter is that we're a violent society. Absent total abolition of prison, we're always gong to have much higher incarceration rates than Europe.

rayiner 6y ago
The current US homicide rate is the same as in England in the late Middle Ages. It’s been 5-10x higher than the UK the entire 20th century. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0002.206/--decivilization-in-the-1960s?rgn=main;view=fulltext https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0002.206/--deci... Also, we have had Obamacare for a decade. We have a less complete social safety net than European countries, but people act like it doesn’t exist.
michtzik 6y ago
As a counterargument to the claim that Europe is less violent than the United States, especially over a historical period going back to the 18th century: Nazi Germany murdered more people in a single named process than the total number of murders in the United States for the entire 20th century.
- robotresearcher 6y ago
  An estimated 12 million Africans were forcibly shipped to the US (and precursors) and they and their descendents enslaved for generations. Did you forget to count them? I’m not minimizing the evil of the Nazi murders. Just pointing out the US started out with a fundamental violence problem of incredible scale.
- kcartlidge 6y ago
  There is a case to be made that war is just legalised murder, but nevertheless in these comparisons the context does not normally include war. And would you really want to? The US is far from innocent with its use of nuclear weapons, fire-bombing Japan (Truman: "there were more people killed by fire-bombs in Tokyo than dropping the atomic bombs"), Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. Note that I'm not saying you're wrong about Nazi Germany, just that, the whilst the death tolls may be either swift or cumulative, it remains the case that all countries are guilty on the war front. So to repeat: the context is criminality not war, where the distinction is the normally accepted delineation of the two.
  - michtzik 6y ago
    I wasn't even including war! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust > Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. Notice the use of the word "murdered" in the second sentence of the article, as well as throughout the rest. The context was violence, not criminality. But even if it were criminality, the Holocaust is widely considered a crime against humanity.
    - kcartlidge 6y ago
      > I wasn't even including war! Maybe you never intended to, but your comment reads: > Nazi Germany murdered more people in a single named process Reference to Nazi Germany does not, as you say, necessarily equate to war. However "a single named process" would to most readers be treated as narrowing it down to "a single named process" - World War Two. The most obvious simple reading of your comment would give the clear impression you meant the war. If that wasn't the intention, if the named process was the wider genocide, or simply the Third Reich, then fair enough. But I'm sure you can understand any misreading.

babesh 6y ago

Incarceration rate is an invalid indicator. You need to look at the crime rate, the release rate, and the rehabilitation rate. There are cycles of poverty and culture causing this but the government’s actions turn SF into both a honeypot and an accelerant for crime. It does this by turning a blind eye to crime both in talk and action. Criminals know that SF is a great place to commit crime. This draws them in from all over and they commit more crime. The DA is selling the narrative of rehabilitation but the criminals are just taking advantage of it to just commit more crime.