5 ms·

Yeah but how much money (and harm) is society saved by having criminals off the street?

by Tycho 5y ago

nerdponx 5y ago
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that sending someone to prison might actually increase their likelihood to commit crimes in the future. You could get a much better ROI by reducing the circumstances that lead to criminality in the first place.
- Tycho 5y ago
  How much of that involves just de-criminalising harmful acts so that the broader public bear the cost? For instance, SF declining to prosecute theft under the value of $900.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Decriminalizing theft has substantial costs as well: https://abc7news.com/target-hours-san-francisco-walgreens-closing-sf-crime-near-me/10854900/ https://abc7news.com/target-hours-san-francisco-walgreens-cl... For those people laid off, they bear the cost, but they are not the only ones, and the economic costs are nowhere near the real costs. A friend of mine owns a coffee shop that was robbed -- he had video of the event, but the police couldn't do anything. But he knew the guy who did it -- a local meth-head who hangs around the area, and later he saw him and they got into a fight and he beat the guy up. Point being, when the police refuse to provide basic protection, people start turning to vigilante actions, private security, metal detectors or shopping by appointment only, etc. Or they flee to jurisdictions in which their livelihoods are protected by the police. That not only raises costs, but it changes the society as a whole. There is a reason that no society has survived that tolerated theft, and it has nothing to do with economic calculations.
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      > people start turning to vigilante actions, private security ...and organized crime, which leads to more crime and more criminality, not less.
      - rsj_hn 5y ago
        Yeah, in grad school one of my colleagues told me how a car was stolen from his father in Italy, and he (the father) went to the local mafia and arranged to have it returned. I did some digging into the history of the mafias in Italy and they really did originate in stepping in to do things like protecting private property when the government refused to do it. That eventually morphed into the "protection racket", but when the government creates a void, people step in to fill it. It's just absurd to think that any random person can steal up to $900 of your stuff whenever they want and that you should be OK with that or that you're not going to defend your property. Yes, maybe if you are a clerk for a big faceless corporation you do nothing and then let the HQ close the store, but if you are a small business owner or an individual, you are unlikely to just let yourself get robbed without fighting back. Society can't function if it doesn't protect private property.

Yeah but how much money (and harm) is society saved by having criminals off the street?

by Tycho 5y ago

Yeah but how much money (and harm) is society saved by having criminals off the street?

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that sending someone to prison might actually increase their likelihood to commit crimes in the future. You could get a much better ROI by reducing the circumstances that lead to criminality in the first place.

Tycho 5y ago
How much of that involves just de-criminalising harmful acts so that the broader public bear the cost? For instance, SF declining to prosecute theft under the value of $900.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Decriminalizing theft has substantial costs as well: https://abc7news.com/target-hours-san-francisco-walgreens-closing-sf-crime-near-me/10854900/ https://abc7news.com/target-hours-san-francisco-walgreens-cl... For those people laid off, they bear the cost, but they are not the only ones, and the economic costs are nowhere near the real costs. A friend of mine owns a coffee shop that was robbed -- he had video of the event, but the police couldn't do anything. But he knew the guy who did it -- a local meth-head who hangs around the area, and later he saw him and they got into a fight and he beat the guy up. Point being, when the police refuse to provide basic protection, people start turning to vigilante actions, private security, metal detectors or shopping by appointment only, etc. Or they flee to jurisdictions in which their livelihoods are protected by the police. That not only raises costs, but it changes the society as a whole. There is a reason that no society has survived that tolerated theft, and it has nothing to do with economic calculations.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    > people start turning to vigilante actions, private security ...and organized crime, which leads to more crime and more criminality, not less.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      Yeah, in grad school one of my colleagues told me how a car was stolen from his father in Italy, and he (the father) went to the local mafia and arranged to have it returned. I did some digging into the history of the mafias in Italy and they really did originate in stepping in to do things like protecting private property when the government refused to do it. That eventually morphed into the "protection racket", but when the government creates a void, people step in to fill it. It's just absurd to think that any random person can steal up to $900 of your stuff whenever they want and that you should be OK with that or that you're not going to defend your property. Yes, maybe if you are a clerk for a big faceless corporation you do nothing and then let the HQ close the store, but if you are a small business owner or an individual, you are unlikely to just let yourself get robbed without fighting back. Society can't function if it doesn't protect private property.