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Here's the problem from the article: "Criminals are caught and arrested, turned over to local authorities for booking, arraigned before the local courts, charge
by vondur 5y ago
Here's the problem from the article:
"Criminals are caught and arrested, turned over to local authorities for booking, arraigned before the local courts, charges are reduced to a misdemeanor or petty offense, and the criminal is released after paying a nominal fine,” said the letter. “These individuals are generally caught and released back onto the streets in less than 24 hours. Even with all the arrests made, the no-cash bail policy and extended time frame for suspects to appear in court is causing re-victimization to Union Pacific by these same criminals.”
The letter goes on to say criminals are boasting to Union Pacific officers that charges will be pled down to simple trespassing – which bears no serious consequence."
- tomlockwood 5y agoAmerica has the highest incarceration rate in the world, though. Maybe the issues with American society aren't ones that can be addressed with more arrests and jail terms?
- selectodude 5y agoThe causes of crime is a different discussion from the crimes being caused. There should be more a holistic approach towards the causes but simply deciding not to prosecute is not the way out of this.
- tomlockwood 5y agoBut, is prosecution truly the way out of this? It doesn't appear to have been effective at preventing plenty of other crimes, in America. Why would it be any more effective in this case?
- legutierr 5y agoIf it’s the same criminals committing the same crime shortly after being released, keeping them in jail will reduce the opportunity they have to commit the crime again, at least for as long as they remain in jail.
- tomlockwood 5y agoI've absolutely heard this rhetoric about short jail terms before, though, about any number of crimes. Is there data to back this up?
- ridaj 5y agoI think the point was that the number of thefts made outside the prison by people who are in the prison is necessarily zero, unless they escaped. Do you need data to be convinced of this?
- tomlockwood 5y agoThey're in prison until they aren't and at that point they may steal enough to make up for the stealing the imprisoning prevented.
- Swizec 5y agoThe point of adding a 10s delay on incorrect password attempts isn’t to make it impossible to brute force passwords, it’s to slow an attacker from 600 tries per minute down to 6/min. This is enough of a deterrence to make brute forcing impractical. If you have to wait 7 days between train robberies instead of 24 hours, that’s a big hit to the business model. Maybe enough to make it impractical.
- tomlockwood 5y agoYour analogy doesn't really help because they aren't just "delayed". Money is wasted on incarcerating them, they come in close contact with criminals, and it makes their ability to get a job, lower.
- somesortofthing 5y agoYou're forgetting the cost of jailing them in the first place. Not only is there an upfront cost of $106k per year(assuming we're talking about CA)[1], that person is also not working(or paying taxes) or gaining any useful skills. What they're doing instead is hanging out in a population of other criminals and participating in a social order that incentivizes if not downright mandates behavior that in itself would be considered criminal in wider society. I don't think it's so far fetched to say that the cost society pays to incarcerate someone with the goal of preventing them from committing more crimes can exceed the cost of the crimes themselves. Deterrence is the only possible way to justify these costs(And prisons do have nonzero use as a deterrent), but the current prison situation makes it clear that prison's RoI growth has some seriously diminishing returns that started at a funding level far lower than the current one. [1]https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost https://lao.ca.gov/policyareas/cj/6_cj_inmatecost
- neither_color 5y agoWhat is the alternative though? Societal interventions are a slow, months to years long process to an acute problem. I'm sure most criminals can be reformed through years of education, therapy and trauma healing but you can't deny that lax sentencing and lax enforcement contribute to opportunistic crime sprees like organized retail theft mobs and train robberies. Nobody needs to rob trains to eat, in America, as you put it.
- tomlockwood 5y ago> Nobody needs to rob trains to eat, in America, as you put it. They don't? That's not what I've heard. https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america
- creato 5y agoMy understanding is that most of the people struggling to feed themselves make too much money to qualify for assistance, but too little to reliably feed themselves. Obviously, those people aren't making too much money (as documented by the IRS and/or banks) by robbing trains.
- refurb 5y agoWhen they have to invent a new term "food insecurity" and your country leads the world in obesity, you know people aren't going hungry in the normal sense of the word.
- tomlockwood 5y agoDo you feel like the obese people are robbing these trains?
- refurb 5y agoSeen photos? Yes, some of them are obese. What’s your point?
- efitz 5y agoProsecuting crime does not eliminate crime; it minimizes crime. For the criminal justice system to deter crime, there has to be a reasonable chance of getting caught and punished, and the punishment must significantly exceed the benefit that obtained from the crime.
- tomlockwood 5y agoThat's not what I've heard: https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/business-law/do-harsher-punishments-deter-crime https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/business-law/do-harsher-pu...
- berberous 5y agoSome of this is really just common sense. I believe the following: - If murder were not prosecuted, or punished by only a day in jail, murder rates would increase. It would effectively be legal. - Changing the sentence on murder from 10 years to life, however, would be unlikely to have any marginal deterrent effect. Stated more generally, I think many sentences in this country are horrifically long, and dramatically shortening them would not increase crime. But if you decrease them to a level where they are de minimis compared to the benefit of the crime, or just not prosecuted at all, I don’t need a study to tell me crime will increase. It is human nature.
- tomlockwood 5y agoI've heard incorrect folk wisdom parroted as if it were true, before, so I'll wait for the study. Plenty of people claim they have a grasp on common sense, and many of them disagree.
- efitz 5y agoDo you eat when you’re hungry and put on a raincoat outside when it’s raining, or do you wait for a study?
- 5y ago
- amznthrowaway12 5y agoRecidivism for most crimes is high. Putting criminals in prison prevents them from committing more crimes.
- Osmose 5y agoI mean, no, there's lots of crimes you can commit in jail that can lead you to an even worse sentence. But also recidivism isn't simply some moral badness in a person, there's tons of factors that feed into it, including the community around the person being released, their ability to provide with a record, etc.
- thebigman433 5y agoBut does prison also cause significant other issues, leading to that recidivism?
- azinman2 5y agoAnd not putting criminals in jail allows them to commit more crimes.
- Stupulous 5y agoLacking crime data for the counterfactual world where crime wasn't prosecuted, I don't think you can make this assertion. Not to say that you're wrong (and I've seen evidence that you're right), but that you can't just eyeball our crime rate and come to any conclusion. It is counterintuitive to suggest that punishments have an insignificant effect on crime rates. It doesn't pass the 'me' test- even my idealized version of myself would steal if there were no consequences, though it's tricky to judge whether I'd be more or less inclined with variable consequences. Again, doesn't mean it's not true, just sets the bar for evidence a little higher.
- tomlockwood 5y agoWell, its similarly frustrating to me that the snap response to crime in America still seems to be, more enforcement. Clearly, the crime rate is the result of a multi-faceted set of variables. Why press the "harsher punishment" button? Also if an idealized version of yourself would still steal, perhaps that is also multi-faceted, and requires some other change to society other than the justice system. What do you think you'd steal? I think I'd steal too - mostly from large corporations, because I don't really care if Disney or Walmart profits go down.
- toast0 5y ago> Clearly, the crime rate is the result of a multi-faceted set of variables. Why press the "harsher punishment" button? Because people are perceiving a higher rate of visible crimes within a reasonably short time after the "reduce punishment" button was pushed. Of course, going back to the old ways without any real progress on anything else is going to put us back to the old problems. (Costs of incarceration are high, concerns about fairness, concerns about conditions, etc) > I think I'd steal too - mostly from large corporations, because I don't really care if Disney or Walmart profits go down. I don't necessarily care about their profits per se, but if Walmart (or maybe a chain store you dislike less) leaves my community because of theft, that makes my life harder.
- tomlockwood 5y ago
- markvdb 5y agoThe Norwegian system is capital intensive, but good at preventing recidivism.[0][1][2] Evidence based policy works. Even starting the transition to evidence based policy in the US would be hard though. [0] https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1177 https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a... [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48885846 https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-48885846 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway
- ambrozk 5y agoAs you say, going from what we have to what they have will be no simple matter. It would take decades of reform at the very least. In the meantime, it doesn't make sense to just stop improning people for minor crimes.
- usbqk 5y agoA system that works in a country won’t work in another country that is culturally different, more heterogenous, etc.
- markvdb 5y agoIt might not work as well, but there are certainly useful hints to be taken. At a bare minimum, it proves that recidivism is not laws-of-physics unavoidable.
- henning 5y agohow would you feel if something like this personally affected you? say you depended on critical prescription drugs to be mailed to you and thieves were robbing the postal service, stealing your medication. what then?
- tomlockwood 5y agoI'd want to reduce the crime rate. But hey, maybe a way of doing that is to reduce the price of medication and therefore its resale value, somehow. Maybe that's another topic we don't really want to interrogate here, though. :)
- twofornone 5y agoHow do you solve the problem of a subculture which glorifies crime? These people don't care about your rules. They take pride in breaking them. They are not interested in your American Dream or your ideas of educational opportunity. Taking advantage of opportunity (or altruism) is an achievement, a victory over perceived weakness. Altruism is a respectable virtue, but forcing altruisum upon others at the hands of barbarism is tyrrany.
- deanCommie 5y agoYou start by disconfirming your beliefs. What is the American Dream? Is it a reality? Is it available to. The people in this subculture you're talking about (curious to hear more about this subculture)? Are the educational opportunities? Is crime glorification the cause, or the effect of a deeper problem? Why does this happen in the richest country in the world? Is it a bug or is it a feature? If it's a feature, what does it imply about those that are able to reach monumental amounts of wealth in this same society?
- trophycase 5y agoUnderrated comment. There's simply too many people who don't care at all about the rules or about participating in a functional society.
- skinkestek 5y agoAFAIK the incarceration rate problems in US have more to do with locking up non violent drug users, the three strikes policy and probably other miguided efforts than with locking up actual thieves, robbers and murderers. But I am not an American.
- tomlockwood 5y agoI've read some interesting things about this idea: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2020.html > It’s true that police, prosecutors, and judges continue to punish people harshly for nothing more than drug possession. Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of almost half a million people, and nonviolent drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. Police still make over 1 million drug possession arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences. Drug arrests continue to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses. > Nevertheless, 4 out of 5 people in prison or jail are locked up for something other than a drug offense — either a more serious offense or an even less serious one. To end mass incarceration, we will have to change how our society and our justice system responds to crimes more serious than drug possession. We must also stop incarcerating people for behaviors that are even more benign.
- VictorPath 5y agoAmerica's incarceration rate is over nine times that of a country like Denmark's. You see the comments here from Americans - even more people need to be incarcerated, the DAs are too soft. People elect these DAs because they are tired of police brazenly murdering people on video and locking everyone up.
- xyzzyz 5y agoUS also has, like, heck of a lot more crime than Denmark. We don’t arrest and jail people for the hell of it.
- beefield 5y agoAnd based on comments here, it seems that many of you guys seriously think that a solution is... arresting and jailing more people? Somehow brings mind the quote about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And from my European point of view, the three strikes thing is pretty much a definition of jailing people for the hell of it.
- throwaway1777 5y agoIf someone committed the same crime in Europe you would put them in jail too, would you not?
- beefield 5y agoContext was how to reduce crime, not whether a specific crime should yield jail time.
- xyzzyz 5y agoYes, that’s how the European country I moved to US from deals with crime. US is insanely lenient toward petty criminals compared to Europe.
- throwaway1777 5y agoIf someone robbed a train in Denmark would they go to jail? No one is saying we shouldn’t find ways to prevent people from committing crimes in the first place, but this experiment in california with having no consequences isn’t working, that’s pretty obvious.
- throwaway73838 5y agoDid you not see the throngs of people stealing from trains? The solution here is not to remove disincentives for antisocial behavior. That would be like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
- tomlockwood 5y agoDo these measures actually disincentivize antisocial behavior over the life of the subject?
- throwaway73838 5y agoI mean take the extremes. If there was no penalty, would people be more inclined to steal? What if the penalty was the most extreme? If you look to Singapore, you’ll find a country with very rough penalties by western standards. Yet that translates to almost no crime.
- tomlockwood 5y agoI can also think of plenty of countries that have even more severe punishments for criminals, that do have a lot of crime, though. Which just leads back to the idea that increased punishment isn't necessarily the solution here.
- throwaway73838 5y agoWell, harsh penalties mean nothing if you have a corrupt and/or underfunded police/criminal justice system. But if you combine a highly efficient and regulated justice system with proper funding and harsh penalties, you will soon have no crime. The problem of course, is people who will advocate for “criminal rights” instead of the rights of victims.
- tomlockwood 5y ago> Well, harsh penalties mean nothing if you have a corrupt and/or underfunded police/criminal justice system. Interesting... This sounds like America, to me. > The problem of course, is people who will advocate for “criminal rights” instead of the rights of victims. Unless the justice system is corrupt, right?
- ridaj 5y agoI think it's a very good point but you also aren't going to convince a lot of people without offering concrete solutions to the immediate issue. What are they, in your opinion? I personally think if the company kept its trains moving and/or had better fences, it might prevent the thefts in the first place. But if your idea is let's not prosecute theft and focus on reducing economic inequalities, I'm not sure I buy it!
- tomlockwood 5y agoYou hit the nail on the head there - lets not smash the "more arrests and harsher punishments UP doesn't have to pay for (what a coincidence)" button, immediately, right?
- PixyMisa 5y agoStop jailing people for simple possession of drugs. Start jailing people for repeated burglary.
- johnnyo 5y agoOne thing that sounded weird in that sentence, who is doing the arresting? Company employees? Do railway employees have arresting authority?
- nathanaldensr 5y agoThey have a police force. https://www.up.com/aboutup/community/safety/special_agents/index.htm https://www.up.com/aboutup/community/safety/special_agents/i...
- dsjfladjsfkl 5y ago
- stephen_g 5y agoHaving many Federal Government departments having their own police forces (like "Postal Police") is weird enough to somebody from another country like me, but the idea of a private company being able to have their own police force is a whole another level - incredible and bizarre...
- someguydave 5y agoThe railroads in the US are pretty heavily regulated by various US government departments. It makes sense to have specialized police for the needs of the railroad.
- justsomehnguy 5y ago> specialized police for the needs of the railroad It's understandable, but for the most Europeans such police force should be a part of a government or a municipal authority, not a private one.
- FateOfNations 5y agoIn Europe the railroad would also be part of a government entity....
- throwawaysea 5y agoThis is exactly what happens in virtually all cities with progressive “restorative justice” policies. Many of these cities have district attorneys (city prosecution office) who effectively excuse crime by removing consequences such as jail time or fines. Many are funded by George Soros’s nonprofits, who are trying to normalize this type of criminal justice policy across the nation [1]. Unfortunately, this removal of deterrents induces additional crime - both in terms of frequency and severity from existing criminals but also in attracting criminals from other areas to these locations. I’ll dive into Seattle as an example of what happens. There was a great documentary made about Seattle’s chronic issue with repeat offenders cycling through the system without consequence or deterrence, titled “Seattle is Dying” [2]. One of the people featured in this documentary, Travis Berge, racked up over 100 police contacts, dozens of civil infractions, 47 criminal cases, and an attempted rape, just in the five years he lived in Seattle. He was repeatedly released and continued to victimize others. A year after this documentary came out, shortly after CHAZ (the infamous “autonomous zone”) and in the same park that was part of CHAZ, he ended up murdering his girlfriend. Former judges and politicians commented that this entire saga was preventable [3] but neither current politicians, nor the city attorney, nor activists who attacked this documentary admitted their fault. Instead they continued with the same policy of not prosecuting crimes. Downtown businesses in Seattle have repeatedly mentioned complained about the continued scourge of widespread shoplifting, loitering, trash, and other problems of blight that have made business difficult in Seattle. It got so bad that businesses were simply giving up on reporting crimes, just like private citizens have also given up [4]. Because the city ignored these issues, the business associations did their own work and put out a deeply-research report covering the pattern of prolific repeat offenders, titled “System Failure” [5]. This report was ignored by local politicians and attacked by progressive activists, journalists, and the homeless-industrial complex local to Seattle. The business association put out another similar report titled “System Failure 2” six months later [6], but it too resulted in no action from the city, simply because acknowledging the problem would be an indictment of the political ideology governing Seattle. Fast forward to 2020 and there was widespread lawlessness spurred on by the George Floyd incident. Extremist activists repeatedly provoked/attacked the police, destroyed businesses, set fires, and engaged in other crimes daily (like blocking highways). There were also notable incidents like CHAZ, which was a display of brazen contempt for law and order. At the end of this year, it came to light that the city attorney had removed all consequences even for the very few that were arrested [7]. The lack of cooperation from the city attorney’s office (in holding arrested suspects accountable), threats of defunding from an activist city council, and general lawlessness led to hundreds of police officers quitting [8], further exacerbating all the issues with crime. All these things add up slowly over time. It’s hard to notice the deterioration “live” as it is happening, but if you compare Seattle from 10 years ago to what it is today, the change is truly astonishing and depressing. To me, the consequence of not enforcing the law was always obvious, but I am guilty of not putting in an effort to speak up against what was happening. Most people who disagreed with what was happening also laughed it off, and didn’t take it seriously. This issue in LA with the railroads could just as easily happen in SF, Portland, Seattle, or other locations that have adopted a similar approach to managing crime. 1. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/george-soros-criminal-justice-reform-227519 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/george-soros-criminal... 2. https://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-is-dying https://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-is... 3. https://mynorthwest.com/2169605/retired-seattle-judge-berge-murder-preventable/ https://mynorthwest.com/2169605/retired-seattle-judge-berge-... 4. https://mynorthwest.com/1538741/uwajimaya-seattle-prolific-offenders/ https://mynorthwest.com/1538741/uwajimaya-seattle-prolific-o... 5. https://downtownseattle.org/files/advocacy/system-failure-prolific-offender-report-feb-2019.pdf https://downtownseattle.org/files/advocacy/system-failure-pr... 6. https://downtownseattle.org/files/advocacy/System-Failure-Part-2-Declines-Delays-and-Dismissals-Sept-2019.pdf https://downtownseattle.org/files/advocacy/System-Failure-Pa... 7. https://komonews.com/news/local/city-attorney-charges-brought-in-8-out-of-261-protest-related-arrests-in-seattle https://komonews.com/news/local/city-attorney-charges-brough... 8. https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/spd-warns-of-staffing-crisis-after-66-more-officers-leave/281-040a65b1-3165-4f24-8652-a5d10860aac7 https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/seattle/spd-warns-o...
- EricDeb 5y agoI'm not at all against these people being released after 24 hours on a misdemeanor. However if it's the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time you've been caught stealing packages from trains the punishment should definitely be increased. Is that not how it works?
- throwawaysea 5y agoNo, unfortunately that’s not how it works at all. See my comment elsewhere in this discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29963965 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29963965) for examples of how it actually plays out.
- coin 5y agoCan’t see your comment, it’s been flagged/removed/censored
- throwawaysea 5y agoThat’s unfortunate. I did notice my comment had a little notice saying ‘flagged’ almost immediately after I posted it, but I thought that people could still access flagged content with a direct link. I’m not sure how these secret features of the website work.
- iancarroll 5y agoYour early-on blame towards George Soros (a magnet for conspiracy theorists, and with an article from 2016) does not help your comment. It’s fine to disagree with progressive prosecutors, but support for them has not been growing from a single person’s political campaign contributions.
- throwawaysea 5y agoBut that is also why I included a source for that note about Soros in my original comment. Commentary on George Soros is often labeled as conspiracy theory, but the reality is that organizations (PACs) funded by him have made campaign contributions to the very DAs that have implemented restorative justice policies. This isn’t a conspiracy theory - election law requires public disclosure of their campaign contributions. Both left-leaning (https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-prosecutor-campaign-20180523-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-prosecutor-ca...) and right-learning (https://nypost.com/2021/12/16/how-george-soros-funded-progressive-das-behind-us-crime-surge/ https://nypost.com/2021/12/16/how-george-soros-funded-progre...) news outlets have covered Soros’s investments in getting progressive DAs elected.
- millzlane 5y agoThere is no proof that anyone they arrested had their charges plead down. The mayor, govenor, and DA says they're charging criminals for felony crimes. So who do we believe?
- nemothekid 5y ago>There is no proof that anyone they arrested had their charges plead down. Yes, the same story exists in San Francisco, and it's difficult to ascertain, at the surface level who is telling the truth. The DA says police isn't bringing them cases, and the police days the DA isn't prosectuting. Meanwhile the media runs with the story that "billionaire progressives" (the oxymoron that flies over everyone's head) are ruining west coast cities.
- ya_throw 5y ago> "billionaire progressives" (the oxymoron that flies over everyone's head) The term accurately conveys the hypocrisy at the heart of US "Progressivism".