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We don't meaningfully fight bike theft for this reason. And this erodes trust in society and rule of law, and gradually leads to vigilantism, privatization of
by nitrogen 5y ago
We don't meaningfully fight bike theft for this reason.
And this erodes trust in society and rule of law, and gradually leads to vigilantism, privatization of security, and segregation due to middle-class flight from high-crime areas.
- mrhyyyyde 5y agoSource to support your statement?
- nitrogen 5y agoHistorical precedent (e.g. white flight), personal experience with losses of thousands of dollars of my former startup's equipment to theft, and forward-looking projections from other HN threads about people who chose to leave the Bay Area.
- MattGaiser 5y agoAs I said, we can dislike it, but as a society we have basically decided that anything short of reasonably straightforward violent crime/extreme violent crime and high value property crime and easy to prosecute drug crime is not worth the effort. I don't disagree, but I hear very little discussion about low solve rates for smaller crimes.
- rsj_hn 5y ago> As I said, we can dislike it, but as a society we have basically decided that anything short of reasonably straightforward violent crime/extreme violent crime and high value property crime and easy to prosecute drug crime is not worth the effort. No, I would say that a few counties have decided this, but the majority of counties have not. In most places, you do get arrested for property crimes, you still serve prison time for this, police still do things like use bait cars and exert resources to catch those who steal, and the idea that property crime should not result in jail time is not widely accepted by the majority of the population.
- kwhitefoot 5y agocounties -> countries ?
- franksredhot 5y agoI assume the parents comment was a reference to some of the counties in Washington state and a few other states where the district attorney’s office has opted to not persecute non-violent offenses or otherwise limit what charges they are willing to pursue.
- rsj_hn 5y agoI am talking about counties in the U.S. There are a handful of extremist district attorneys that follow the view that non-violent crime should not result in prosecution or prison. To my knowledege, there are no countries anywhere that have adopted this view, and only a few local district attorneys are advocating for it. There are differences in the severity of non-violent crime needed to get prison sentences, but that was always the case.