29 ms·

I think increasingly that people in western societies are misunderstanding (and electing people to positions of power who misunderstand) the big picture purpose

by sfifs 5y ago

I think increasingly that people in western societies are misunderstanding (and electing people to positions of power who misunderstand) the big picture purpose that law enforcement and justice system has played throughout civilized history. The primary purpose is to promote economic growth by reducing societal costs by deterring crime and fraud (including 'civil' fraud like breaking contracts) in an orderly manner. The purpose is deterrence and without effective deterrence, costs of "lack of trust" drive economic inefficiency that are felt both at macro level and individual level. Where I live, people routinely leave bicycles and scooters outside when running errands, routinely take public transport and walk at any time of the day or night without fear and routinely leave delivery packages for collection at the doorstep just to give a few examples because the crime rate is low given strong deterrence. All this translates to lower costs individually, lower pollution, more efficient logistics leading to lower economic overheads and also a healthier than average population (exercise while taking public transport) leading to lower long term health care costs which enables the government to invest in more welfare state like measures wich in turn reduces crime further. Note however that social justice and welfare goals are advanced by other organizations in the Government, not the law enforcement organization. Without deterrence, you get a negative spiral as we're beginning to see in cases like this where the purpose of justice system is being subverted to goals other than deterrence. These other goals are very important, but they need to be achieved by other independent organizations so you don't get the carrot at the cost of the stick being broken.

JPKab 5y ago
This is common sense, except to the foolish activists who believe everything Rousseau ever wrote.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> Where I live, people routinely leave bicycles and scooters outside when running errands, routinely take public transport and walk at any time of the day or night without fear and routinely leave delivery packages for collection at the doorstep just to give a few examples because the crime rate is low given strong deterrence I've lived in places like this, as well. Except it didn't come down to the existence of the police, but the fact that it was a middle to upper middle class neighborhood where nobody had a reason to commit petty theft. Deterrence wasn't a factor at all with the people that lived there when it came to buying and selling drugs like cocaine, for example. Truthfully, I think most property crime would be stopped in its tracks if people didn't have economic reasons to commit petty theft. > I think increasingly that people in western societies are misunderstanding (and electing people to positions of power who misunderstand) the big picture purpose that law enforcement and justice system has played throughout civilized history. If we look at the history of policing in the US, we didn't have municipal police forces for quite some time. In the North in port cities, merchant owners would hire security at their ports, and decided that it would be cheaper to instead make it a government service that everyone pays for instead of just the merchants[1]: > In cities, increasing urbanization rendered the night-watch system completely useless as communities got too big. The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838. Boston was a large shipping commercial center, and businesses had been hiring people to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places, says Potter. These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.” In the South, policing rose out of gangs of slave patrols[1]: > In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. During the Civil War, the military became the primary form of law enforcement in the South, but during Reconstruction, many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves. Ultimately, the origins of policing in the US from wealthy owners wishing to secure their expensive assets from theft, destruction, or in the case of slaves, escape, and also not wanting to pay for that security themselves. Later those police forces served those same owners by serving as strikebreakers[1]: > For example, businessmen in the late 19th century had both connections to politicians and an image of the kinds of people most likely to go on strike and disrupt their workforce. So it’s no coincidence that by the late 1880s, all major U.S. cities had police forces. Fears of labor-union organizers and of large waves of Catholic, Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European immigrants, who looked and acted differently from the people who had dominated cities before, drove the call for the preservation of law and order, or at least the version of it promoted by dominant interests. For example, people who drank at taverns rather than at home were seen as “dangerous” people by others, but they might have pointed out other factors such as how living in a smaller home makes drinking in a tavern more appealing. (The irony of this logic, Potter points out, is that the businessmen who maintained this belief were often the ones who profited off of the commercial sale of alcohol in public places.) [1] https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/
- gruez 5y ago
  >In the North in port cities, merchant owners would hire security at their ports, and decided that it would be cheaper to instead make it a government service that everyone pays for instead of just the merchants[1] You realize that cost of theft would otherwise be passed on to consumers? It's not exactly a free lunch to get merchants to pay for their own security. Also, I'm sure you can invoke the "it would be cheaper to instead make it a government service that everyone pays for" excuse for any other government service. eg. roads, military, education, etc. Should we look at those services with the same type of cynicism?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bhawks 5y ago
  > Truthfully, I think most property crime would be stopped in its tracks if people didn't have economic reasons to commit petty theft. As someone who grew up poor this type of racist/classist argument is insulting. The poor have morales, values and pride too. The people robbing these trains are criminals and do not represent the community they live in. Frankly your hurting poor kids by allowing these criminals to be present and act like role models.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    > As someone who grew up poor this type of racist/classist argument is insulting. The poor have morales, values and pride too. I grew up very poor, as well, around plenty people who sold weed when it was illegal to pay rent because the other option was living on the street. The truth is that if someone is hungry, they aren't going to just curl up, starve and die. Even more so if their kids are hungry. I don't think that makes them bad people at all, and some their choices may even be the most moral actions to take. I'm not making a moral argument or judgment at all with that statement, I'm just stating the simple fact that theft will happen if people are deprived of the property they need to live. It seems that society has chosen to hire people to beat and imprison others as the solution to theft, instead of choosing to alleviate the deprivation of resources that causes most of it. Truthfully, I think the former option is what's racist and classist.
h0l0cube 5y ago
> Where I live, people routinely leave bicycles and scooters outside when running errands Just plainly asking: what's the situation with social welfare where you live?
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Where I live sounds a lot like where he lives in terms of property crime (this place is no pinnacle of law and order, quite the opposite really). People in my state joke about it being "bad" but unless you leave your $1k road bike unlocked within view of the street for a long time it's probably not gonna grow legs. You don't see people engaging in crime with a victim in broad daylight It's a blue city in one of the bluest states in the country, if that's what you're asking. The social services are about as good as you're gonna find in the US. The city shares a border with a slightly smaller urban area in one of the lower service red states (they haven't even legalized weed yet, not that that's a service). That side of the river is not noticeably higher or lower in crime. This rampant petty property crime problem seems to follow specific public policy, not any other variable.
  - beebmam 5y ago
    Social services in LA are quite awful and have been since I was a child, from public transportation, to public education, to assistance for the homeless, to access to health care, to water quality, to police services (and corruption), to fire services, to road maintenance, to traffic management. Much of this is due to the design of the region: the greater Los Angeles area is a sea of concrete in a desert, that extends for 100 miles in every direction. It's impossible to run as a region efficiently and requires a massive amount of effort to provide services for. The weather's nice though :)
  - refurb 5y ago
    So clearly not California?
  - nopenopenopeno 5y ago
    >It's a blue city in one of the bluest states in the country >unless you leave your $1k road bike unlocked within view of the street for a long time it's probably not gonna grow legs In other words, you live and work in the wealthy parts of the city.
WriterGuy2021 5y ago
Uh, what? How did making blacks sit at the back of the bus improve economic efficiency? It may be argued that many legal systems, far from being a boon to economic productivity, actually hindered growth in many nations due to their use in oppressing underclasses for the benefit of a ruling "elite," i.e., rapacious predator class. Reality isn't so nice and theoretically pure. People want power and they develop various systems to gain and secure their power.
smogcutter 5y ago
> the big picture purpose that law enforcement and justice system has played throughout civilized history. The primary purpose is to promote economic growth by reducing societal costs by deterring crime and fraud (including 'civil' fraud like breaking contracts) in an orderly manner. Citation needed...
- namlem 5y ago
  Yeah, that's just not true. I'd say it's at least somewhat true of the past 300 years or so, but for most of the history of civilization, economic growth was negligible and generally not an important consideration for governments.
  - aeternum 5y ago
    More than 300 years ago it was more like economic survival vs. growth. Adam Smith talks about the supply of labor being limited basically due to human starvation.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
somethoughts 5y ago
I'd also say a part of this I think is the end result of cash bail reform initiatives from 3 years ago. And the moving fast and break things when it comes to removing legacy code/public policy and rewriting from scratch. This Vox video is probably the type of thought piece that spurned the populist cash bail reform initiatives that California embarked on 3 years ago. Why fixing the US bail system is tricky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mhwDSHKEyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mhwDSHKEyM I think the challenging part is that if you just listen to the Vox which provides no rebuttal to itself, it all seems logical? But that's because it doesn't present the alternate reality that there do exist actual bad actors in real life who can thrive in causing societal level nuisances when there is a revolving door which we are seeing playing out right now.
- somethoughts 5y ago
  Also its not always the low level street criminal that we envision that are most in need of being brought to justice. The true criminals are mostly the people higher up managing the backend distribution who you don't see who are systematically taking advantage bail reform and of the low level actors who may indeed need the money for food - at scale. The nice thing is that societally there probably isn't much disagreement that these higher ups who are buying second vacation houses with these "earnings" need to be held accountable. For instance with the San Francisco retail thefts [1]: "agents seized and recovered approximately $8 million of stolen merchandise from retailers across the San Francisco Bay Area" "Video from a police stakeout shows Drago unloading trunkloads full of merchandise at one of his warehouses — mouthwash, cleaning supplies, shampoo, foot spray, over-the-counter medicine, and more than $1 million dollars worth of razors. Drago allegedly directs the boosters to steal small, compact items, with long expiration dates, and high resale value." To add another dimension of irony if there's a similar pattern to the CVS/Walgreens shoplifting distribution mechanisms - the main distribution back into the system is Amazon and E-bay, etc. "The stolen goods eventually find their way to Ebay, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and Amazon, where they are sold at a steep discount. Dugan says there’s a big societal cost to saving a few bucks." So in that case, Amazon stuff is getting pilfered only to back into Amazon to be sold as Amazon marketplace items - no questions asked. [1] https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/06/major-san-francisco-bay-area-retail-theft-ring-busted-five-suspects-arrested-8-million-in-stolen-merchandise-recovered/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/06/major-san-franc...
TameAntelope 5y ago
Deterrence is the stick sure, but the carrot is social programs to grow people out of the need to steal in the first place. Most people don't want to steal, but many more do because they feel they have to. You can't deter someone from putting food on their family's table, putting a roof over their head, or getting sound sleep.
- mc32 5y ago
  When I was young I knew people who stole (juvenile delinquents and some not so juvenile). Sometimes it was food sometimes it was other things. It was very rarely because they needed to. They were idle and did it because they could and would not get punished (back then cameras were not as prevalent.) Point is, more people steal because it's "easy" more than because they "have no alternative". People sometimes think just because they would only steal as a last resort just before death that other people treat theft with the same moral compass. No, they don't. Some people are plain opportunists.
  - rdtsc 5y ago
    An easy way to verify is to see what is being stolen or looted. It is almost never produce, bags of beans or rice. It is often luxury brands, alcohol, electronics and stuff like that. I don’t think we need more mandatory sentences or stricter laws, but simply turning the other way and not punishing this kind of behavior is also going to backfire. There has to be a balance. I suspect it’s all designed to artificially reduce the crime stats (“if we don’t process or book them no crime was committed”) while at the same time getting extra points for social justice. Two birds with one stone.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > turning the other way and not punishing this kind of behavior Where do we have data that that is happening?
      - rdtsc 5y ago
        > Where do we have data that that is happening? It’s in the letter being discussed.
hindsightbias 5y ago
monoculture is monoculture
doppp 5y ago
Sounds like Singapore.
chrischen 5y ago
I could easily steal my neighbor’s packages, and it has nothing to do with deterrence being why I don’t. I don’t steal from them because I am not envious of them and they are more or less my equals, and I have no need to steal from them. If that ever stops being the case maybe solve that problem first and understand how to go back to when deterrence wasn’t even necessary.
- simplestats 5y ago
  I agree it's not only deterrance (cops cared just as little when my gps was stolen in a good neighborhood versus in a bad one). You still need to ability to compare risk versus reward sanely. People I've known who couldn't hold a job always had emotional/mental issues. They hated authority so much they'd rather be unemployeed than have a boss telling them what to do. If they did have a job they'd sabotoge it one way or another. If you did lose your livelihood I suspect you would fare better due to the same impulse control and ability to delay gratification that led you to be temporarily wealthy in the first place.
wolverine876 5y ago
> The primary purpose is to promote economic growth by reducing societal costs by deterring crime and fraud (including 'civil' fraud like breaking contracts) in an orderly manner. What is that based on? I can see wealthy property owners thinking that - that the police are there to serve their personal interests, including by enforcing the laws they control to a large degree - but I don't know any basis for it nor do I think other segments of the population would agree. In fact, it's arguable that law enforcement has been to a great extent about power: The powerful suppressing the weak, such as minorities. > The purpose is deterrence If you mean, the primary means of law enforcement is deterrence, it seems plausible but there is a lot of research out there. Again, where does this theory come from? Also, how is locking up innocent people a form of deterrence? That seems to be a form of oppression. > Without deterrence, you get a negative spiral as we're beginning to see in cases like this where the purpose of justice system is being subverted Crime rates are generally very low. Homicides and shootings have increased, but relatively equally across the country, in large and small communities. (source: recent FBI crime report) Where is the evidence that particular policies are causing an increase in crime?
HWR_14 5y ago
Deterrence is one reason to punish people. There is also retribution (or vengeance), rehabilitation (making the person productive) and isolation (murderers aren't free to murder again)
pasabagi 5y ago
> the crime rate is low > given strong deterrence This is a theory that doesn't fit the facts. The US has some of the highest prison sentences of any first world country. Where I live, there are some of the shortest and gentlest, and yet, crime is very low. There is no correlation between harsh 'deterrence' and low crime.
- abacate 5y ago
  It's not the punishment but the likelihood of being punished. Even if the punishment is not that severe, a high probability of being caught is a much greater deterrent.
  - pasabagi 5y ago
    Honestly, that sounds plausible, but how would you achieve higher conviction rates? You're not going to get far with the current US police. If you compare the money put in to the crime stats, the picture is one of an extreme inefficiency. They've failed in their mission to such an extent that a large minority of people simply don't trust them enough for them to do their duty to those people. They've preside over a third-world crime rate with first world tax revenues. At this point, it would be reasonable to start talking about a wholesale reboot of the whole operation. However, if that's too radical, or too expensive, it would seem pragmatic to try and target crime through some other mechanism - e.g. welfare.
marcellus23 5y ago
> The primary purpose is to promote economic growth by reducing societal costs by deterring crime and fraud (including 'civil' fraud like breaking contracts) in an orderly manner. Source please. There’s actual studies promoting things like bail reform that use actual data and such. Do you have anything like that, or are you just preaching from your privileged bubble with no idea what it’s like to be on the other side of the justice system?
- caffeine 5y ago
  The data are in, the experiment has been done, and the conclusions are undeniable: it is a complete disaster. Anyone who thinks criminals are “good people in bad circumstances” and “having to be a criminal is punishment enough for their crimes” is just wilfully ignorant. One can’t help but wonder if people pushing these policies are victims of “no-consequences positive parenting” 30 years later. Those policies can work fine in a loving home - not so much in the adversarial and violent world of society at large.
  - marcellus23 5y ago
    So in other words, you don't have any sources.
    - caffeine 5y ago
      TFA is the source
      - marcellus23 5y ago
        Nope
  - marcellus23 5y ago
    > The data are in, the experiment has been done, and the conclusions are undeniable: it is a complete disaster. This is no experiment. This is a single case in a single city that may have been avoidable with other policy decisions. > Anyone who thinks criminals are “good people in bad circumstances” and “having to be a criminal is punishment enough for their crimes” is just wilfully ignorant. Ah, the real bias comes out now. > One can’t help but wonder if people pushing these policies are victims of “no-consequences positive parenting” 30 years later. Those policies can work fine in a loving home - not so much in the adversarial and violent world of society at large. More pseudo psychology please!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by sfifs 5y ago

JPKab 5y ago

This is common sense, except to the foolish activists who believe everything Rousseau ever wrote.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> Where I live, people routinely leave bicycles and scooters outside when running errands, routinely take public transport and walk at any time of the day or night without fear and routinely leave delivery packages for collection at the doorstep just to give a few examples because the crime rate is low given strong deterrence I've lived in places like this, as well. Except it didn't come down to the existence of the police, but the fact that it was a middle to upper middle class neighborhood where nobody had a reason to commit petty theft. Deterrence wasn't a factor at all with the people that lived there when it came to buying and selling drugs like cocaine, for example. Truthfully, I think most property crime would be stopped in its tracks if people didn't have economic reasons to commit petty theft. > I think increasingly that people in western societies are misunderstanding (and electing people to positions of power who misunderstand) the big picture purpose that law enforcement and justice system has played throughout civilized history. If we look at the history of policing in the US, we didn't have municipal police forces for quite some time. In the North in port cities, merchant owners would hire security at their ports, and decided that it would be cheaper to instead make it a government service that everyone pays for instead of just the merchants[1]: > In cities, increasing urbanization rendered the night-watch system completely useless as communities got too big. The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838. Boston was a large shipping commercial center, and businesses had been hiring people to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places, says Potter. These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.” In the South, policing rose out of gangs of slave patrols[1]: > In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. During the Civil War, the military became the primary form of law enforcement in the South, but during Reconstruction, many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves. Ultimately, the origins of policing in the US from wealthy owners wishing to secure their expensive assets from theft, destruction, or in the case of slaves, escape, and also not wanting to pay for that security themselves. Later those police forces served those same owners by serving as strikebreakers[1]: > For example, businessmen in the late 19th century had both connections to politicians and an image of the kinds of people most likely to go on strike and disrupt their workforce. So it’s no coincidence that by the late 1880s, all major U.S. cities had police forces. Fears of labor-union organizers and of large waves of Catholic, Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European immigrants, who looked and acted differently from the people who had dominated cities before, drove the call for the preservation of law and order, or at least the version of it promoted by dominant interests. For example, people who drank at taverns rather than at home were seen as “dangerous” people by others, but they might have pointed out other factors such as how living in a smaller home makes drinking in a tavern more appealing. (The irony of this logic, Potter points out, is that the businessmen who maintained this belief were often the ones who profited off of the commercial sale of alcohol in public places.) [1] https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/ https://time.com/4779112/police-history-origins/

gruez 5y ago
>In the North in port cities, merchant owners would hire security at their ports, and decided that it would be cheaper to instead make it a government service that everyone pays for instead of just the merchants[1] You realize that cost of theft would otherwise be passed on to consumers? It's not exactly a free lunch to get merchants to pay for their own security. Also, I'm sure you can invoke the "it would be cheaper to instead make it a government service that everyone pays for" excuse for any other government service. eg. roads, military, education, etc. Should we look at those services with the same type of cynicism?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bhawks 5y ago
> Truthfully, I think most property crime would be stopped in its tracks if people didn't have economic reasons to commit petty theft. As someone who grew up poor this type of racist/classist argument is insulting. The poor have morales, values and pride too. The people robbing these trains are criminals and do not represent the community they live in. Frankly your hurting poor kids by allowing these criminals to be present and act like role models.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > As someone who grew up poor this type of racist/classist argument is insulting. The poor have morales, values and pride too. I grew up very poor, as well, around plenty people who sold weed when it was illegal to pay rent because the other option was living on the street. The truth is that if someone is hungry, they aren't going to just curl up, starve and die. Even more so if their kids are hungry. I don't think that makes them bad people at all, and some their choices may even be the most moral actions to take. I'm not making a moral argument or judgment at all with that statement, I'm just stating the simple fact that theft will happen if people are deprived of the property they need to live. It seems that society has chosen to hire people to beat and imprison others as the solution to theft, instead of choosing to alleviate the deprivation of resources that causes most of it. Truthfully, I think the former option is what's racist and classist.

h0l0cube 5y ago

> Where I live, people routinely leave bicycles and scooters outside when running errands Just plainly asking: what's the situation with social welfare where you live?

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Where I live sounds a lot like where he lives in terms of property crime (this place is no pinnacle of law and order, quite the opposite really). People in my state joke about it being "bad" but unless you leave your $1k road bike unlocked within view of the street for a long time it's probably not gonna grow legs. You don't see people engaging in crime with a victim in broad daylight It's a blue city in one of the bluest states in the country, if that's what you're asking. The social services are about as good as you're gonna find in the US. The city shares a border with a slightly smaller urban area in one of the lower service red states (they haven't even legalized weed yet, not that that's a service). That side of the river is not noticeably higher or lower in crime. This rampant petty property crime problem seems to follow specific public policy, not any other variable.
- beebmam 5y ago
  Social services in LA are quite awful and have been since I was a child, from public transportation, to public education, to assistance for the homeless, to access to health care, to water quality, to police services (and corruption), to fire services, to road maintenance, to traffic management. Much of this is due to the design of the region: the greater Los Angeles area is a sea of concrete in a desert, that extends for 100 miles in every direction. It's impossible to run as a region efficiently and requires a massive amount of effort to provide services for. The weather's nice though :)
- refurb 5y ago
  So clearly not California?
- nopenopenopeno 5y ago
  >It's a blue city in one of the bluest states in the country >unless you leave your $1k road bike unlocked within view of the street for a long time it's probably not gonna grow legs In other words, you live and work in the wealthy parts of the city.

WriterGuy2021 5y ago

Uh, what? How did making blacks sit at the back of the bus improve economic efficiency? It may be argued that many legal systems, far from being a boon to economic productivity, actually hindered growth in many nations due to their use in oppressing underclasses for the benefit of a ruling "elite," i.e., rapacious predator class. Reality isn't so nice and theoretically pure. People want power and they develop various systems to gain and secure their power.

smogcutter 5y ago

> the big picture purpose that law enforcement and justice system has played throughout civilized history. The primary purpose is to promote economic growth by reducing societal costs by deterring crime and fraud (including 'civil' fraud like breaking contracts) in an orderly manner. Citation needed...

namlem 5y ago
Yeah, that's just not true. I'd say it's at least somewhat true of the past 300 years or so, but for most of the history of civilization, economic growth was negligible and generally not an important consideration for governments.
- aeternum 5y ago
  More than 300 years ago it was more like economic survival vs. growth. Adam Smith talks about the supply of labor being limited basically due to human starvation.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

somethoughts 5y ago

I'd also say a part of this I think is the end result of cash bail reform initiatives from 3 years ago. And the moving fast and break things when it comes to removing legacy code/public policy and rewriting from scratch. This Vox video is probably the type of thought piece that spurned the populist cash bail reform initiatives that California embarked on 3 years ago. Why fixing the US bail system is tricky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mhwDSHKEyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mhwDSHKEyM I think the challenging part is that if you just listen to the Vox which provides no rebuttal to itself, it all seems logical? But that's because it doesn't present the alternate reality that there do exist actual bad actors in real life who can thrive in causing societal level nuisances when there is a revolving door which we are seeing playing out right now.

somethoughts 5y ago
Also its not always the low level street criminal that we envision that are most in need of being brought to justice. The true criminals are mostly the people higher up managing the backend distribution who you don't see who are systematically taking advantage bail reform and of the low level actors who may indeed need the money for food - at scale. The nice thing is that societally there probably isn't much disagreement that these higher ups who are buying second vacation houses with these "earnings" need to be held accountable. For instance with the San Francisco retail thefts [1]: "agents seized and recovered approximately $8 million of stolen merchandise from retailers across the San Francisco Bay Area" "Video from a police stakeout shows Drago unloading trunkloads full of merchandise at one of his warehouses — mouthwash, cleaning supplies, shampoo, foot spray, over-the-counter medicine, and more than $1 million dollars worth of razors. Drago allegedly directs the boosters to steal small, compact items, with long expiration dates, and high resale value." To add another dimension of irony if there's a similar pattern to the CVS/Walgreens shoplifting distribution mechanisms - the main distribution back into the system is Amazon and E-bay, etc. "The stolen goods eventually find their way to Ebay, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and Amazon, where they are sold at a steep discount. Dugan says there’s a big societal cost to saving a few bucks." So in that case, Amazon stuff is getting pilfered only to back into Amazon to be sold as Amazon marketplace items - no questions asked. [1] https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/06/major-san-francisco-bay-area-retail-theft-ring-busted-five-suspects-arrested-8-million-in-stolen-merchandise-recovered/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/06/major-san-franc...

TameAntelope 5y ago

Deterrence is the stick sure, but the carrot is social programs to grow people out of the need to steal in the first place. Most people don't want to steal, but many more do because they feel they have to. You can't deter someone from putting food on their family's table, putting a roof over their head, or getting sound sleep.

mc32 5y ago
When I was young I knew people who stole (juvenile delinquents and some not so juvenile). Sometimes it was food sometimes it was other things. It was very rarely because they needed to. They were idle and did it because they could and would not get punished (back then cameras were not as prevalent.) Point is, more people steal because it's "easy" more than because they "have no alternative". People sometimes think just because they would only steal as a last resort just before death that other people treat theft with the same moral compass. No, they don't. Some people are plain opportunists.
- rdtsc 5y ago
  An easy way to verify is to see what is being stolen or looted. It is almost never produce, bags of beans or rice. It is often luxury brands, alcohol, electronics and stuff like that. I don’t think we need more mandatory sentences or stricter laws, but simply turning the other way and not punishing this kind of behavior is also going to backfire. There has to be a balance. I suspect it’s all designed to artificially reduce the crime stats (“if we don’t process or book them no crime was committed”) while at the same time getting extra points for social justice. Two birds with one stone.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > turning the other way and not punishing this kind of behavior Where do we have data that that is happening?
    - rdtsc 5y ago
      > Where do we have data that that is happening? It’s in the letter being discussed.

hindsightbias 5y ago

monoculture is monoculture

doppp 5y ago

Sounds like Singapore.

chrischen 5y ago

I could easily steal my neighbor’s packages, and it has nothing to do with deterrence being why I don’t. I don’t steal from them because I am not envious of them and they are more or less my equals, and I have no need to steal from them. If that ever stops being the case maybe solve that problem first and understand how to go back to when deterrence wasn’t even necessary.

simplestats 5y ago
I agree it's not only deterrance (cops cared just as little when my gps was stolen in a good neighborhood versus in a bad one). You still need to ability to compare risk versus reward sanely. People I've known who couldn't hold a job always had emotional/mental issues. They hated authority so much they'd rather be unemployeed than have a boss telling them what to do. If they did have a job they'd sabotoge it one way or another. If you did lose your livelihood I suspect you would fare better due to the same impulse control and ability to delay gratification that led you to be temporarily wealthy in the first place.

wolverine876 5y ago

> The primary purpose is to promote economic growth by reducing societal costs by deterring crime and fraud (including 'civil' fraud like breaking contracts) in an orderly manner. What is that based on? I can see wealthy property owners thinking that - that the police are there to serve their personal interests, including by enforcing the laws they control to a large degree - but I don't know any basis for it nor do I think other segments of the population would agree. In fact, it's arguable that law enforcement has been to a great extent about power: The powerful suppressing the weak, such as minorities. > The purpose is deterrence If you mean, the primary means of law enforcement is deterrence, it seems plausible but there is a lot of research out there. Again, where does this theory come from? Also, how is locking up innocent people a form of deterrence? That seems to be a form of oppression. > Without deterrence, you get a negative spiral as we're beginning to see in cases like this where the purpose of justice system is being subverted Crime rates are generally very low. Homicides and shootings have increased, but relatively equally across the country, in large and small communities. (source: recent FBI crime report) Where is the evidence that particular policies are causing an increase in crime?

HWR_14 5y ago

Deterrence is one reason to punish people. There is also retribution (or vengeance), rehabilitation (making the person productive) and isolation (murderers aren't free to murder again)

pasabagi 5y ago

> the crime rate is low > given strong deterrence This is a theory that doesn't fit the facts. The US has some of the highest prison sentences of any first world country. Where I live, there are some of the shortest and gentlest, and yet, crime is very low. There is no correlation between harsh 'deterrence' and low crime.

abacate 5y ago
It's not the punishment but the likelihood of being punished. Even if the punishment is not that severe, a high probability of being caught is a much greater deterrent.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  Honestly, that sounds plausible, but how would you achieve higher conviction rates? You're not going to get far with the current US police. If you compare the money put in to the crime stats, the picture is one of an extreme inefficiency. They've failed in their mission to such an extent that a large minority of people simply don't trust them enough for them to do their duty to those people. They've preside over a third-world crime rate with first world tax revenues. At this point, it would be reasonable to start talking about a wholesale reboot of the whole operation. However, if that's too radical, or too expensive, it would seem pragmatic to try and target crime through some other mechanism - e.g. welfare.

marcellus23 5y ago

> The primary purpose is to promote economic growth by reducing societal costs by deterring crime and fraud (including 'civil' fraud like breaking contracts) in an orderly manner. Source please. There’s actual studies promoting things like bail reform that use actual data and such. Do you have anything like that, or are you just preaching from your privileged bubble with no idea what it’s like to be on the other side of the justice system?

caffeine 5y ago
The data are in, the experiment has been done, and the conclusions are undeniable: it is a complete disaster. Anyone who thinks criminals are “good people in bad circumstances” and “having to be a criminal is punishment enough for their crimes” is just wilfully ignorant. One can’t help but wonder if people pushing these policies are victims of “no-consequences positive parenting” 30 years later. Those policies can work fine in a loving home - not so much in the adversarial and violent world of society at large.
- marcellus23 5y ago
  So in other words, you don't have any sources.
  - caffeine 5y ago
    TFA is the source
    - marcellus23 5y ago
      Nope
- marcellus23 5y ago
  > The data are in, the experiment has been done, and the conclusions are undeniable: it is a complete disaster. This is no experiment. This is a single case in a single city that may have been avoidable with other policy decisions. > Anyone who thinks criminals are “good people in bad circumstances” and “having to be a criminal is punishment enough for their crimes” is just wilfully ignorant. Ah, the real bias comes out now. > One can’t help but wonder if people pushing these policies are victims of “no-consequences positive parenting” 30 years later. Those policies can work fine in a loving home - not so much in the adversarial and violent world of society at large. More pseudo psychology please!

deleted 5y ago

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