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This article talks about a program designed to fix the "root" of crime and homelessness. Instead of arresting people, they'd call social workers. "Success" was

This article talks about a program designed to fix the "root" of crime and homelessness. Instead of arresting people, they'd call social workers. "Success" was measured by how many people were arrested and so the program "succeeded" because they responded to 750 calls but didn't arrest anyone. But is arrest really related to how well a program solves the root of the problem? It seems like a better measure would be something related to their actual goal. So why didn't they measure rate of property crime? Rate of homelessness? Poverty? Drug addiction? Supposedly these are the real causes of crime and homelessness. If they did actually measure those things, I think their evaluation of the program would be different [0] [1]. >> "Denver saw significant increases in most types of property crime in 2020. In comparison to the average of the previous four years, burglaries rose 23% in 2020, larceny rose 9%, auto theft rose 61% and theft from cars rose 39%, Denver police data shows." [0] [0] https://www.denverpost.com/2021/03/15/denver-property-crime-2020/ https://www.denverpost.com/2021/03/15/denver-property-crime-... [1] https://denver.cbslocal.com/2021/05/20/aurora-homeless-camping-ban-debate/ https://denver.cbslocal.com/2021/05/20/aurora-homeless-campi...

objectivetruth 5y ago
If the current social model is "poor social services AND criminalization with its attendant burdens" and the new model is "poor social services," then it seems the cost savings from not arresting, processing, and incarcerating these folks would be enough of a success. For a homeless person, the benefits of not having a cop beat you up and throw all your meager possessions away is probably very valuable, if hard for us to quantify. Not jailing the homeless doesn't imply that they're responsible for an increase in crime, nor should it alone be expected to solve homelessness as a problem in any quantity.

objectivetruth 5y ago

If the current social model is "poor social services AND criminalization with its attendant burdens" and the new model is "poor social services," then it seems the cost savings from not arresting, processing, and incarcerating these folks would be enough of a success. For a homeless person, the benefits of not having a cop beat you up and throw all your meager possessions away is probably very valuable, if hard for us to quantify. Not jailing the homeless doesn't imply that they're responsible for an increase in crime, nor should it alone be expected to solve homelessness as a problem in any quantity.